Welcome Home
by sunsolace
Summary: Nate is still on active duty the day the bombs fall, but his squad goes AWOL in the months of ensuing chaos. Upon returning home, he descends into Vault 111 to find his family. They should be safe and sound down there. Kmeme prompt fill. F!Sole/M!Sole.
1. Chapter 1

For the first month after the bombs drop, Staff Sergeant Nate Prescott is a good little soldier. When the hardest fighting in Anchorage had concluded, Fox Company had been assigned to the garrison at Geneseo. Leave hadn't been on the cards; being stationed at some small town on the East Coast was the closest they were going to get to home. At least it didn't take as long to send messages to their families.

Which means that on October 23, they're too far away to do any good.

Even with the scramble order, they only have minutes. Just enough time to assemble outside and watch the world crumble. Mushroom clouds split the horizon, city after city consumed by a pillar of nuclear fire. Streaks of greasy black smoke belch into the gray atmosphere, blocking out the sun.

What Nate hadn't in a million years anticipated was how little time it took. Done and dusted in just two hours; that's all the time they needed to irrevocably fuck the world. Go team.

Somehow, it's worse than the drawn-out engagement he'd pictured.

The EMP from the bombs knocks out most of their electronics, so while the eggheads desperately try to reestablish contact with Washington, Fox Company's Captain Madeline Harvey orders them to travel the old fashioned way into Geneseo. The town didn't take a direct hit, but that's all that can be said in its favor. Civilians are panicking in the streets, some fleeing with all the belongings they can carry, others trying to start their dead cars, and a few just standing there shell shocked. On the horizon there are too many fires to count, casting a red glow that bounces off the low-hanging plumes of ash.

Fox Company establishes contact with the local rationing center, then sets up a shelter in a nearby town hall. By midnight the place is full—and starving.

A week later, it rains. The water is black.

Captain Harvey once again proves herself worthy of their loyalty when she orders her personnel to remain indoors unless necessary and to fall back to the locations they've secured. Of the patrols sent out to secure food and medicine, only the personnel in power armor survive the week. When they return from their forays, the plating is streaked with soot and corroded from acid rain. Some poor bastards set out bowls to collect the water, and it gets mighty quiet in the streets after that.

Plants shrivel and die, poisoned by the cancerous spread of black. Funny, how the gentle patter of falling rain sounds so sinister when he knows it carries death. It drums of the roof like the soft footsteps of some lithe many-legged monster—something from _Grognak,_ probably, only a lot less entertaining and a lot more horrible.

Worse, radiation disperses into the air, the ground, their bones. They may be safe—relatively speaking—from the initial explosions, but radiation isn't half as spectacular or half as obvious. Not until people start keeling over, at least.

Worse still, the screams. Gunfire.

In those weeks, it's hard enough to keep a lid on the pot with a company of veterans. Nate can't imagine how bad it is for the civilians out there on their own.

Kaelyn and Shaun are—

It's easier to focus on his duty, to push away the reality that looms behind him like a shadow. And like a shadow, tethered to his feet, he can't quite escape it. In the quiet minutes he spends maintaining his gear, or in the stretching hours of his sleep shift, the truth rattles just out of reach. For a long time, all he can see when he closes his eyes is the imprint of a mushroom cloud.

In the hellish turn the world has taken, it's easier to just follow orders. Their current directives are to secure the area, prepare for another attack and wait for further instruction.

What's left of Nate's squad assembles: Corporal Irene 'Dylan' Brenner, Corporal Gina Miller and Private Gilbert Sculley. Stupidly, Nate still expects to see his second, Sergeant Hanson to waltz in and take her place beside him. But no, he hasn't seen her since their final push in Anchorage, when she charged a Chinese holdout and never came back. Weiss and Moreno too are gone, and he feels their absence keenly.

For that first month, Fox Company does its damnedest to maintain order between the fires and riots. No one has managed to establish contact with DC, so in the absence of any orders Captain Harvey orders the company to maintain order while they prepare for an invasion that isn't coming. Not if the USA gave as good as its got on October 23. They scour the town hall for documents on the town's infrastructure or anything that could help the army establish control over Geneseo. Squads comb the town for sites of interest—Super Duper Marts, doctors' clinics—to secure supplies.

Alas, a number of civilians have the same idea. Most of them have guns. Quiet little Geneseo never experienced food shortages like, say, Boston's inner city, but you would never have guessed it from the way mobs gather in front of the rationing center, flinging vitriol and debris at the personnel stationed around the perimeter. As civilians get more desperate, they're less intimidated by the heavy gunners in power armor. Looters comb their way through every building; when the obvious pickings are gone, they set their sights on more lucrative targets. Some survivors band together into gangs, marauding through the city and picking fights for food or fun. Patrols are attacked more often, and no matter the gap in equipment and training, all it takes is a lucky shot. And hungry people with guns can get in a lot of lucky shots.

Just a few weeks, and suburbia is nigh unrecognizable.

One night someone sets fire to the town hall. Nate's on guard outside, facing away from the hall to preserve his night vision. Shadows dart through a nearby car park, and he slides his finger inside the trigger guard.

"Eyes peeled!" he calls, and the others snap to.

There's a tinkling crash behind him. Someone whoops from the darkness. In the corner of his eye, Nate sees another blur of orange sailing through the air to land explode in a gout of glass and fire.

"Contact!" he shouts and opens fire.

A single soldier in power armor can turn the tide of a battle. With four, it's almost laughable. The aggressors realize that while they can scurry between vehicles, they can't land a solid hit—not after a molotov cocktail explodes on Miller's shoulder and she shoots the thrower in the throat without missing a beat. Three hostiles cut and run, to snarled threats from their abandoned compatriots, and at that moment they've lost.

By the time the soldiers eliminated the last hostile the hall is ablaze, pouring smoke and civilians out the windows. They evacuate as many people as they can but—not enough. A number of soldiers stationed in side don't make it out either, with the notable exception of one Gilbert Sculley. Singed his eyebrows off—not that it makes much difference with his pale blond hair—but Nate's too relieved to tease.

Keeping an eye out for any remaining hostiles, Nate nudges the nearest body with his toe. The man's hair has fallen out in clumps, the bare patches on his scalp as grimy as the rest of him. On top of his leather jacket is a chest piece of standard-issue combat armor. From his array of crude weapons and lack of discipline, Nate doubts this guy ever served.

A single shot rings out and Nate's head snaps up. Brenner moves from one body to the next, checking this one is dead-dead.

* * *

The old adage 'things look better in the morning' is a confirmed lie. Despite the best efforts of their depressingly experienced salvage teams, there's not much to be saved from the hall. No one's seen the sun since before the bombs dropped, so the perpetually overcast skies provide an appropriate, gloomy atmosphere for them to work in. Outside the town hall's smoldering foundations, the grass has withered into black mud.

Barely a handful of civvies are left; Nate requests permission to escort them past the roadblocks and out of town where they might find someplace safer to stay. His petition is denied. Instead his squad is assigned to a Super Duper Mart, and upon their arrival there are only eight other soldiers there to greet them.

Not all of the losses the company has suffered are casualties; there's been a rash of desertions. No matter the saber-rattling from the officers, Nate can't condemn the bastards who run. Not entirely, anyway. Every soldier with a family's thought about it, and he's no exception. But he can't abandon his post.

Besides, there's nowhere to run _to._

* * *

Grief, like the most insidious radiation poisoning, eats from the inside out. It hits Nate in an empty corridor of all places, all at once like someone in power armor punched his chest, and he buckles.

 _They're gone. They're gone. I never got to hold Shaun again— never told Kaelyn how much I lo—_

She'd asked him not to leave again. She hadn't begged, aware that this is his life and not hers, and too poised besides. But still. She'd asked, and he'd signed on for his next tour anyway.

And then there's the rest of his family. His parents and three brothers. Shit, Anders recently moved to New York City.

Nate's far from the only one with bloodshot eyes. No one mentions anything, but the people who know he has a family won't meet his gaze.

* * *

By December, the rains have stopped but the sky's still poisoned, and there's no snow despite the plummeting temperature. After they lose the Super Duper Mart to a street gang, Nate's squad is assigned to yet more guard duty around the rationing center.

On one chilly afternoon, a group of strangers cluster on the street corner. There's a rattle as eight soldiers raised their guns in sync. One of the unknown possibly-civilians-possibly-hostiles detaches from the group to limp to the barricade where Nate and a kid named Ferguson stand. Nate's emotions are at odd with themselves, the heady joy that swells in his chest at seeing more survivors unable to displace a wary instinct that warns him they could be hostile. Bundled in layers of winter clothes, the baggy drape of this guy's five shirts could hide weapons or even the rough leathers the gangs favor.

"Hold it." Nate trains his rifle on the ground by the man's feet. "State your business."

The man raises his grimy hands. "Please don't shoot! We're starving and Lori's sick and— and we've got nowhere else to go. Please help."

Nate glances back at Sculley, who stands by the door. "Alert Captain—"

"Look out!"

Too late. In Nate's peripheral there's a whirlwind of motion and a wet thunk. Time slows as he looks down, his brain giving him ample time to truly appreciate the knife buried in his side between the ballistic plates of his armor, before the pain hits. And boy does it _hit._ Fire spears through his gut, white-hot and raw-edged, chasing up his ribs to constrict his lungs. One knee gives out beneath him as he staggers back—and that's enough distance for his squad to open fire.

Under the starburst of red, all Nate can think is, _He didn't really have a limp._

* * *

Nate spends Christmas in a makeshift basement-turned-infirmary, getting third hand reports that can be summed up as 'shit's going from bad to worse'. At least he has a familiar face in Brenner, who works in the infirmary when she isn't on patrol. Medics are worth their weight in gold at the best of times; now they're worth their weight in clean water. Occasionally she even doles out some sympathy for an old friend.

"Dylan." Despite the precise dose of med-x—enough to cloud his senses but not enough to make the pain go away—Nate manages to snag her wrist. "In my bag there's a Nuka-Cola lunch box. Can you grab it for me?"

"When my shift's over, yeah." She has to pat his hand to remind him to let go.

Brenner's as good as her word and at whatever unholy hour she's finally permitted a break, she fetches the lunch box before slinking away to her bunk. Nate runs his fingers across its dented surface and something in his chest eases, just slightly. Popping the lid, Nate paws through the holotapes to check the letters and photos are still in the bottom. They are.

With a grim—borderline masochistic—anticipation, he flips through the stack of photos and stops on a dogeared close up of Kaelyn. It's a poor facsimile of his wife: her smile is a pale, flat thing while her copper skin is reduced to a dull gray. Her hair curls in loose waves around her collarbones in a way that only makes him want to brush them over her shoulder and press his mouth to that sensitive spot on her neck.

Just a month before the bombs dropped Nate had received the latest photos of Shaun, weeks out of date by the time he tore open the envelope. His little man sports a dark tuft of hair that could only have been inherited from his mother, cause it sure ain't anything like Nate's own auburn. In one photo Shaun is asleep, his chubby hand poking out from under a blanket. In another he's sitting up with Kaelyn's hand supporting him, peering at the camera with big, dark eyes.

 _He's going to be crawling soon._

In Nate's chest, his heart aches as hot as the moisture in his eyes.

Miller visits on Christmas Eve and, as it turns out, she doesn't just come to taunt her superior with a bottle of bourbon he can't drink. She kicks back in the seat beside his bed, resting her feet on the edge of his mattress. Runs a hand through her black hair, which has grown out in springy coils that bounce around her head like a cloud. No one has time for personal grooming anymore, regs be damned.

Miller takes a sip from her bottle and purses her thick lips. Can't pry words out of her with a crowbar if she doesn't want to talk, so Nate doesn't even try. She moves his lunch box from the bed to the floor, and all that stops Nate from snapping at her is the knowledge that she keeps her family photos in a pouch on her heavy engineer's belt.

"Do you…" Hoarse from dehydration, Nate's voice gives out. He clears his throat for take two. "Do you think they could still be out there?"

"Maybe. Maybe not." She shifts in her seat, her feet sliding across the mattress to bump his shins. Her gaze is distant. "Not knowing is worse, you know?"

He does.

Miller quietens for a time, but her ebony fingers tighten on the neck of the bottle. "It's always busy in the garage—you know we've got more power armor than people now? But I've gotta wonder what the long-term plan is here. All we're doing is putting out fires and doing a shit job of it. Do you…" her voice drops, black eyes flitting around the room. With the Christmas Eve party in full swing upstairs, the only potential eavesdroppers are a dozing medic in the corner and a Jangles the Moon Monkey some asshole thought would be 'good for morale' pinned to the wall with a switchblade in one ear. "Do you ever wonder how things might've been different if you'd been at home when the bombs dropped?"

He closes his eyes. "All the time."

"Maybe— _maybe_ —I could deal with it if we were doing some good out here. Making sure someone got out of this alive. But we aren't. So all I can think of is Kenzie and my girls."

Kenzie, Miller's spouse—they're a pro at handling trouble, like Kaelyn. But also like Kaelyn in that they aren't prepared for war to break out in their neighborhood.

He and Miller don't say anything more, although they do have a half-hearted foot fight. With the bottle only half-drunk, she retreats to her bunk for some shut-eye. Instead of following her example, he hangs one arm over the bed to touch the lunch box and thinks.

* * *

On January 8th 2078, the _real_ winter kicks in. With glowing snow. The sewers may have been a clever place to hide from the bombs but now they become an icy crypt, filled with irradiated slush. The only good part is if it hits the remnants of the army hard, its hits the gangs harder. Attacks plummet as surely as the temperature.

Once Nate's cleared for duty, his only outside forays involve power armor, but it doesn't protect his eyes from the green glare that shines upward with an eerie incandescence, or the bodies in the streets, at once frozen by snow and burned by radiation. Word from the infirmary is they're worried about running out of anti-rad meds. As for the rest of the time, well, being cooped up on base isn't so bad when he still has fifteen holotapes to listen to. Brenner can throw him as many wayward looks as she wants; he only counts down the hours until he can hear Kaelyn's smooth voice and Shaun's soft coos again.

In April, the snow melts under a sudden rush of heat that doesn't quite manage to escalate to full-blown summer. Captain Harvey take a bullet in the spine and things _really_ go to hell. By this point the chain of command is so muddy _Nate_ stands a chance of getting a promotion. But no—one of the few remaining officers assumes control. Under Lieutenant Thompson's command, Fox Company is little better than the gangs that roam the streets. Their orders are to shoot all non-personnel on sight.

Enough is enough.

Nate and Miller get talking. Off the record, of course. Having known him since high school, Brenner knows all his tells and invites herself into their little discussion. And of course they can't leave Sculley behind. Trust him to still be an ass after an atomic war, but he's the last of their squad. They consider asking a few others in Fox Company, but in the end opt to keep it among themselves. No telling who might sell them out for an extra coffee ration.

By the time they desert, barely anything remains of the company. What's left scrabble like dogs for supplies, gunning down any civilians who stray too close to their stockpiles.

It's almost too easy. Nate volunteers his squad for a patrol, and they don't report back. There are so few people left his squad are assigned two suits of power armor. Miller takes one, of course, and Nate designates Sculley as their second heavy gunner. Before they move out, Nate takes a final look around the rationing center, knowing this is the last time he'll ever freely move among the army, and tries to quash the fear.

Drawing in a long breath through his nose, he closes his eyes. He pictures Kaelyn, imagines her dark, steady gaze and the feel of her lips ghosting along his nape.

It's a mistake, he knows, as the memories lance through what defenses he's built around his heart with the precision of a laser, but he could use some of her fortitude right about now.

They pass the perimeter guard in silence. Nate tells himself they can't possibly know what he's planning; all they see is another recon squad venturing forth. The back of his neck prickles with the weight of their eyes.

His heart pounds behind layers of bone and steel.

So close.

They head down the hill to sweep the suburbs, silent but for the warning tick of their Geiger counters. Bruised skies press down on the teetering buildings that litter the valley like refuse, as gray and dreary as they've been since October. Between the four of them, they've got two suits of power armor, eight canisters of water, four packs of field rations, ammo for their collective arsenal, and all the anti-rad meds Brenner stole from the infirmary.

The crack in Nate's heart widens with every step, so when Miller sidles up to him and murmurs, "Sir?", he nods and the guilt that's _supposed_ to be eating him has apparently gone AWOL too. The motion feels like the swing of an executioner's ax.

They now have one directive: _run_.

Going AWOL during wartime has always carried severe penalties, and with the number of desertions reaching an all-time high in the wake of the bombs, the consequences have only gotten steeper.

His squad has hours before they're expected to report in, so they're sure gonna use it. A silent agreement propels them forward for almost forty eight hours of no sleep and few breaks. Subtlety is the antithesis of power armor, built to intimidate the Chinese with its bulk, so there's no point even attempting discretion.

Nate narrows his focus to his gait. If he does that, it quietens both the soldier that demands he report back and the husband that aches for his family.

The sun is a pale disk behind the perpetual green-rimmed clouds, sinking towards the black horizon, when they finally stop. Even then, it's only so Miller can take a screwdriver to the radio module in both suits, shutting down any component that could be transmitting back to base. A townhouse serves as their shelter against the encroaching dusk. Brenner walks through the rooms, consulting her Geiger counter while the rest of them check for hostiles and defensibility.

She stomps back into the kitchen to pronounce, "It… should be safe."

When the medic is uncertain, that doesn't fill Nate with confidence.

Sculley is the first to work up the nerve to release the seals on his power armor. When he doesn't keel over—and giving it a minute just to be sure—Miller steps out of her armor as well. Nate stands in the circle of slumped suits while Miller and Sculley raid the pantry and Brenner slips back down the hallway.

Despite not having eaten in almost two days, the thought of food turns Nate's stomach now that he's standing in someone's house, windows shattered and walls ruptured, waiting for its owner to walk through the front door and threaten to call the cops. To distract himself from the itch between his shoulder blades, Nate finds Brenner in the bathroom, searching the cabinets for anything of use. She gives a thin sigh and turns her head enough to look at him. Best friends since high school, and he's never known the expression carved into her face now. Flyaway strands of dark blonde hair have escaped her bun and fresh lines have been scored around her honey brown eyes.

"They bombed the shit out of us; we bombed the shit out of them. We just broke every oath we ever made—to our government and our people." While her voice remains steady, her next breath is anything but. "Now what?"

Nate pinches the bridge of his nose. "Wish I knew."

When it's his turn that night to take watch, he stands in power armor and tries to look anywhere but at the family photos on the wall. Funny that after six months, this is the detail that doesn't compute, that his brain decides to too surreal. Despite his better judgment, Nate scrambles to his pack and draws out the lunch box, careful not to rattle its contents. Picking out a holotape at random, he shoves it in the player and folds over at the sound of his wife's voice.

 _"You should have received your latest care package. Hopefully your superiors don't confiscate it this time, unless they're in dire need of fresh socks… which, knowing you soldier types, is entirely possible. It's not the most exciting of mail, I know, but the riots are getting worse in the city. Sending you all our love."_

Nate mutes the external speakers so no one can hear him weep.

* * *

Their forced march is directionless, measured not by where they are heading but by what they are running from.

Power armor makes for a terrible defense against the sight of blown out buildings, their windows shattered in the local blast. Roads clogged with cars that have been strewn about like toys. A teddy bear sitting at a bus stop.

When it's Nate's rotation in the power armor, he lowers the volume the exterior microphones to ignore Brenner and Sculley's latest argument and plays one of Kaelyn's holotapes. As far as pain goes, this one is preferable.

 _"Codsworth is nothing short of magical, I swear. I don't know when I stopped being afraid he'd hurt Shaun. It's nice not having to worry about the laundry, but he's more than a simple robo-butler. Yesterday we played charades and Codsworth joined in…"_

His squad has another human encounter in a Red Rocket Stop: two gents in the middle of clearing out a Nuka-Cola vending machine. They bolt at the first sign of power armor—although shortly after a brick flies through the window to hit Sculley's armored ass. Nate insists they leave the Nuka-Cola machine alone, and tucks a packet of gum in a bag the looters dropped. He hopes there's someone out there who'd do the same for his wife and son.

After another tense, silent night they move out in the gunmetal predawn. By the time they reach the next town they're down to a day's worth of water. The old brick buildings sport hairline fractures and a few have crumbled. As one of two protected by power armor, Miller takes point. She avoids the main streets, cutting through backyards and alleys, hunkering down behind cars whose paint jobs have been pockmarked by acid rain. As much as it leaves a bad taste in Nate's mouth, they scour the houses they pass for any supplies. Most places bear signs of looting—and worse.

With power cut to the town, no tap will release a drop of water. Unfortunately, with the easy availability of town water, few civilians thought to store away bottles. Either that or the looters who came before have already taken whatever had been available.

Shouts carry in the distant wind, followed by gunfire, so Miller leads them in the opposite direction. Sculley complains under his breath because he's a contrary sonofabitch, but even he knows not to argue. They don't bother attempting to search any super markets; no doubt survivors have already claimed those smorgasbords, and if they've made it this long then they know how to defend it.

 _"… Shaun loved it; he couldn't stop laughing at Codsworth's imitations. Unfortunately most of the challenges aren't designed for a floating robot with three limbs. Next time I'll tape our charades game for you, if you want. Shaun's growing so fast and I— I don't want you to miss it. He can roll around on his own now and I'm morbidly curious to discover what trouble he gets himself into before he can even walk…"_

A Mr Handy propels itself out of an apartment block. "I say! Is that the army here at last to rescue us? I haven't seen Miss Springer since—"

Miller shoots. Unlike the Mr Gutsys, the domestic model has no armor so a trio of rounds shred through its plating. Ducking past a flailing appendage, she gets close enough to put a final bullet in its processor. The robot's indignant squawking cuts off at once.

Sculley's the first to find his voice. "Good thing I didn't dress up as a Mr Handy for Halloween."

Nate's the second. "What the hell was that for, Corporal?"

Miller already crouches in front of the Mr Handy with a screwdriver, removing its outer casing. "This model has an inbuilt water purifier. Small scale, but beats having nothing."

They drag the robot into the cover of a ground-floor apartment; Nate and Brenner stand guard while Miller dismembers the Mr Handy piece by piece, scavenging anything that will fit in her equipment belt or vest pockets. Sculley prowls the flat, throwing open every cupboard, but the place has already been picked over by looters. Old sooty bootprints stand out on the once-cream carpet.

There's a whoop from the bedroom. Brenner startles, reaching for her sidearm, and swears as Sculley appears in the doorway.

Sculley's moderate victory encompasses a half-empty packet of cigarettes he found under the bed and a pair of briefs. No one argues his ownership of the latter, but when he holds a cigarette between his teeth—that catches their attention. He somehow sports a sunburn despite spending the day in power armor— no, Nate realizes upon closer inspection, noticing how Sculley's eyes are bloodshot, the red stark against his baby blues. Can't be sunburn.

"I hope you're planning on sharing a smoke with me," Miller says, her tone as mild as ever, without looking up from her work. She misses the resentful look Sculley throws her. "Y'all owe me for saving your asses."

In the end they all share one cigarette, passing it around the living room. Nate takes a drag and closes his eyes to relish the stale tobacco before blowing out a lungful of smoke. Kaelyn will have his head if she sees him lapsing—

Nate cuts that thought off, but it's too late.

He'd give anything to see her again. Even if she's angry, even just to argue, the cold professionalism she employs against prosecutors in the courtroom evaporated under the heat of her honest glare.

Something cracks in his chest and he draws in a sharp, hitching breath.

Nate volunteers to stand guard in the power armor while Miller coils several feet of copper wire to squirrel away.

 _"… Your mother told me all the stories about you and your brothers, so I'm ready for anything. I'd almost say I hope he takes after my side of the family, but— well, you know that's not necessarily better. Love you, big guy."_

In the dinginess of the encroaching dusk they opt to stay put for the night after relocating to the second floor and booby-trapping the stairs with makeshift tripwires. Turns out there _is_ a purpose to the wires Miller scavenged. No one's game enough to suggest a fire, not even for warmth when shattered panes of glass litter the carpet, allowing cold air and eerie silence to creep into the flat. No light shines through the windows; the street lights are long dead and the stars are hibernating above the clouds.

After a half-ration meal, Nate hops back into the power armor for first watch while the others pile together in the double bed the same way they'd pile on a bunk in the barracks. The now-familiar impulse flits in the back of his mind, but Nate holds out against it for as long as he can, running through routine maintenance on the power armor. No hull breaches detected, atmospheric seals holding, fusion core with seventy-eight percent juice, Geiger counter still operational

Despite running through every test he can think of—twice—Nate is soon left with the unnerving quiet of a dead street. And the urge to fidget. Boredom is an inevitable part of war, and after all these years Nate thought he could wait like a pro. He owes it to his squad to focus on the job; ears are just as important as eyes when keeping watch. Only he wants to be anywhere but inside this cosy little flat they're squatting in, with its mismatching furniture and damp carpet. One wall has buckled, wallpaper bubbling from intense heat, its shapes a faint impression in the near-total blackness.

Unbidden, he wonders if this is what Sanctuary Hills looks like now. Sounds like.

The elastic band that is his resolve, stretched to its limits, snaps. Giving up never felt so good.

Maybe it isn't nicotine he should be worried about developing an addiction to.

The click of the holotape player is loud in the dark, or at least loud in his ears. _"They've started construction on the vault just outside Sanctuary Hills. Can't say I appreciate their work hours, but it isn't like Shaun lets me sleep much anyway. That's right, little guy, I'm talking about you. Heh, don't touch that or we can't talk to Daddy anymore… there we go. Vault 111, it's supposed to be. All those construction workers have to pass Mrs Able's house to reach the track behind the cul-de-sac, and she's horrified at the damage to her garden—"_ a baby's gurgle cuts her off and Nate's heart clenches. On the tape, Kaelyn laughs. _"That's right, Shaun, we're practicing the fine suburban art of gossip…"_

All Nate has of Shaun are photos and audio logs and old memories of his birth. Never got to know his own son because he'd been out here playing soldier instead of being a father. Home—that's where he should have been. Who knows, maybe he could have put his army training to better use protecting his family at the end. Maybe they'd still be alive if he'd been there to protect them.

He almost misses Kaelyn's voice lose its playful lilt, softening to something pensive.

 _"I'm… I'm thinking of signing us up for the vault. It's insurance, right? We shouldn't need it, but… just in case."_ A heavy silence drops like a rock. Then she hums. _"We love you. Please come home, Nate."_

He can't breathe in the sudden rush of fear and—hope. It crushes his chest, its weight almost too much to bear.

Ejecting himself from the power armor, Nate scrubs the tears off his face and bursts into the bedroom. Sculley jumps in surprise, almost knocking Brenner off the bed. Miller too flinches, flailing about for threats. Three pairs of hands reach for weapons, only relaxing when their respective owners recognize him.

In hindsight, not Nate's best move. But he barely spares it a thought, breathless and downright _giddy_ with hope. "I know where we need to go."


	2. Chapter 2

Boston's skyline has never been so welcoming—and so wrong. The city's silhouette is dull and dark, like a grainy photograph, and even from this distance there's a niggling feeling in his gut that something's not right.

Through each fresh hell they'd encountered since leaving Geneseo, Nate had closed his eyes and pictured Kaelyn's knowing smile.

 _I'm coming, honey. Just hold on and keep Shaun safe._

They take the freeway overpass at a fraction of its recommended speed—the army never did get around to installing those jet packs on their power armor—in the hopes of avoiding the irradiated land below. This comes with its own drawbacks as they navigate the clutter of vehicles knocked about by the shock wave. Nate tries not to look in the windows at the grimacing corpses stuck in a traffic jam for eternity. Brenner makes a distressed noise when they have to climb over a sports car whose paint has barely chipped by a nuclear detonation. Not only do their boots ruin the paint job, but their weight crumples the roof in.

Nate still listens to the holotapes; someone would have to pry them from his cold, dead hands by this point.

 _"Hi, honey. Shaun has something he wants to show you. He's been practicing very hard."_ Kaelyn coos at Shaun and he starts singing a wordless tune.

No matter how many times he hears it, no matter how he knows Shaun is just wrapping his tongue around the sounds and has no clue what they mean, his heart swells with love and pride.

 _That's my boy._

In the encroaching evening, it becomes clear something is wrong. The continuous curtain of clouds is normal these days. What's not normal is the deep green light west of Boston, cradled by mountains Nate is certain weren't there before. The glow radiates upward to bounce off the bellies of low-hanging clouds, highlighting how close they loom over the earth, and probes outward with sickly green fingers.

Nate stops mid-step, his blood turning to ice water.

"Check it out."

"What the _hell?_ Did a bomb land there or something?"

"Green means radioactive, right?" Sculley looks downright sick, but then, he hasn't been so crash hot during their little jaunt across the state. Brenner's certain it's radiation poisoning.

Nate would like to say it's easier to pretend to be fearless from inside half a ton of protective steel but, well, he'd be lying.

Even with the ominous glow on the southwestern horizon, disaster doesn't strike from the obvious direction. One moment they're walking along, enjoying yet another cloudy radioactive day, and the next a car in front of them explodes.

Nate ducks behind the nearest cover as the ball of fire launches shrapnel in all directions, self-preservation overriding the knowledge he's encased in the best infantry protection the US Army has. Greasy smoke belches upward, concealing the source of gravelly snarls. Something crawls out from under a nearby car, pale and misshapen, and lunges for Sculley.

"What is _that_ —?!"

Nate springs in between the creature and its target and it bounces off his chest plate. Laser fire flies past him; a few stray shots blacken his armor, and the thing falls as another five slither out of nearby vehicles. Miller plants herself beside Nate to create a wall of power armor and they brace for the oncoming charge. Adrenaline spikes on his tongue at their growls, and he shoots in time with his drumming heart.

As the frontmost creatures fall, their fellows trip over them in their haste. That makes them easy targets for a hail of gunfire. Nate's squad shoots and keeps shooting until none of the creatures are twitching anymore.

Even if it isn't the most challenging battle Nate's ever fought in, he's left shaken as he takes in the bodies. Most of them are wearing civilian clothes. Shirts, slacks, a few skirts in the mix. "What just happened?"

Brenner crouches down to examine the nearest body, but only after she puts another round in its forehead, just in case. Turning its head this way and that, she prods the ropey tendons that contort its mouth in a permanent grimace. "Seems like its skin burnt away. And whatever it is, it looks… human."

At that moment Sculley stumbles away and doubles over, retching. Nate hops out of his armor to grab his collar so he doesn't fall face-first into his own vomit. Swilling a precious mouthful of water, Sculley grimaces when he spits it out. As he looks up, Nate notices for the first time how dry his skin is, peeling off his gaunt and reddened cheeks. When Nate shifts to let go, Sculley's hand snaps out, his grip imbued with the superhuman strength of the desperate.

Lurking in Sculley's bloodshot eyes is fear.

Nate only lets go when Brenner appears, conceding his place to her, and she all but drags Sculley to a quiet spot to examine him more thoroughly. Even though Nate's first aid training isn't as thorough as hers, he knows her check up takes too long for a patient with a clean bill of health. He and Miller poke the bodies some more, wondering what happened to the poor bastards who had been turned into these… things. Has the New Plague evolved? Is it a final gift from China? Something else entirely?

The glow on the horizon only strengthens as the afternoon wears on, illuminating the bruised-black clouds with an unholy green wreath. It isn't the aurora borealis, that's for damn sure.

Without warning, Sculley stops in his tracks. Miller swears, the servos in her suit grinding as she halts to avoid squashing him.

For all that his voice is quiet, it doesn't soften his scorn. "What's the point? What are we hopin' to achieve here?"

"I don't know about you," Nate says as mildly as he can manage, "but I'm finding my family."

"You really think your family survived in this hellscape? Your soft little bird?" Sculley's laugh is hard. "You poor bastard."

"Sculley!" Brenner hisses.

Nate's banking on a lot of if's here. He knows that.

"No, no." Nate holds up his hands. He should be angry, but his heart is persistently, stubbornly steady behind his ribs. This calm is—jarring. "I'm listening, buddy. It's a long shot. I know. And I'm asking you guys to help when you've got your own families to worry about. But we have nowhere else to be. Nowhere else to go. We have _nothing else,_ you hear me?" Brenner shoots him a concerned look, and he realizes his control is fraying. He draws in a breath to steady himself. Looks from face to face. "Anyone else has any better ideas, hit me with 'em now."

Sculley meets Nate's gaze, silently stubborn. Or maybe stubbornly silent. At last his gaze drops and he swears under his breath.

"We're going to find our families," Miller says, and that seals it. "The Sergeant's is closest, so we go there first."

Sculley growls and scuffs a boot in the hard-packed dirt. "Don't say I didn't warn ya."

Nate makes it to the cover of a truck before he breaks. Sliding down the side of a Corvega, he lands heavily on the ground and presses the heel of his palm against his forehead. Footsteps crunch in the broken glass, and Miller drops to the ground beside him. When he looks over, her eyes are wet.

He reaches for Miller's shoulder and she grips his arm, without a shred of comfort to offer one another. There's only the camaraderie of uncertainty between them.

* * *

"You ever feel like you're the horse chasin' a carrot on a stick?" Sculley asks. Today he doesn't even bother to comb his hair to hide the chunks that have fallen out.

"All the time," Nate says.

* * *

The overpass continues south towards Lexington. The road Nate is used to driving on is a pain to walk, but eventually they hit Bedford Station. It's as close to Sanctuary Hills as the freeway will take them.

Since there's no nearby exit ramp, they jump. A quarter-second of flight that Nate's hindbrain drags out to a full three seconds before gravity does its job. He plummets, leaving his stomach somewhere on the railing, and catches Sculley's whoop before he hits the ground in a thunderous blow, knees bending to absorb the shock. Another impact shudders through the ground and Nate steps out of the crater his boots have made to check Sculley is safe on his back, and that Brenner remains uninjured on Miller's.

They head west, skirting around Concord. It's always an exercise in compromise: go through the wilderness and risk running out of supplies, or go through the city and risk running into people. Even before the bombs dropped, their uniforms didn't always garner them praise and adoration from the civilian masses.

Nate loads another holotape. With luck, this will be the last stopgap before hearing Kaelyn's voice in person, free of the recording's tinniness. _"I have something of a confession. Michelle from the firm contacted me today, asking if I'd take a look over some case files. I'm not committing to anything, just perusing. I have to admit I miss it. When you retire from the army, it'll be_ your _turn as the stay at home parent while I get back into the workforce. I have to put that expensive degree to use, right?"_

Nate's heart pounds in his chest at the sight of the Red Rocket Stop ten minutes out, and then again at the bridge that leads straight to his neighborhood. His breath bounces hot and clammy off the inside of his helmet and back into his face. Kaelyn will kill him for not using toothpaste. An absurd humor tickles him at the thought. He has to squash it before it evolves into full-fledged hysteria.

The sunny sign by the bridge welcomes them to Sanctuary Hills.

Finally.

At first Nate doesn't realize the others have stopped until Brenner's voice, unusually soft, clicks over the interior speakers. "Do you want to check your house first?"

A part of him shies way from the prospect of seeing his home as banged up and irradiated as every other vacant house in the country. Shies away from discovering two skeletons on the floor—one a woman's and the other a baby's. "No. If anyone's alive, they'll be in the vault."

Despite his declaration, despite keeping his head lowered to watch his scuffed boots, he notices in his peripheral the brown lawns and dead hedges. Windows gape. Doors hang ajar on their hinges and a yard flamingo has been tossed onto the sidewalk. The houses are bright, empty dwellings bordered by rickety fences. Not even white picket fences are able to protect them from calamity, despite every promise of a happily ever after. A lump forms in his throat and he can't talk, can't cry out, can't breathe.

Kaelyn and Shaun were supposed to be safe. War was never supposed to touch them here.

This is his _home,_ dammit.

"Spooky." Sculley half-turns to take it all in. "I feel eyes on the back of my neck."

The beaten dirt path to Vault 111 is past the Ables' fence line, just like Kaelyn said in the holotape, and the little wooden bridge that spans the creek would be picturesque if not for the dark, mud-choked water below and the dead maples lining the bank. This time of year they should be deep green, offering shade against June's implacable heat. Up the eroded hill, where grass has been worn away by months of construction vehicles, the billboard stands proud to advertise the vault. _Prepare for the Future._

Bodies are scattered around the gate to the construction yard. Nate's stomach turns at the sight; he tries not to wonder which of his neighbors he's stepping over. When his foot connects with something that clatters away, he cringes in his armor—but at second look he recognizes the army-green helmet that belonged to a slumped body in rotting fatigues.

The vault is so new no one even packed up the construction gear. Shipping containers have been knocked around the yard like Shaun's toy blocks across the nursery rug. A giant circular hatch sits towards the lookout, its yellow and blue drawing attention like the bright colors that mark a venomous creature, crouching on top of the hill. Nate prowls around it, searching for lock or a button or _anything_ that will open the damn door.

"Over here!"

Nate's head snaps up to one of the prefabs, where Sculley is waving him over. The space is too cramped for one soldier in power armor let alone two, so he checks his Geiger counter and steps out of his protective casing. Miller stands by some sort of control panel, and Nate pushes to her side. Sculley shoves back but Nate barely notices, especially not when he's almost twice the other man's size.

Miller gives the panel a once-over and taps the speaker. "Means of two-way communication. If this thing still has juice, it should mean the vault is functioning as intended."

Nate leans over the microphone. "This is Staff Sergeant Prescott of the United States Army. Do you copy?"

No response.

He repeats the message a second time, then a third. Waits ten frustrating minutes while Miller checks the radio is in working order and tries again. "This is Staff Sergeant Prescott. By the authority of the US Army, you are hereby ordered to unlock the elevator and permit us entrance."

Not a peep.

Surveying the rest of the control panel, Nate flicks back the cover guard on the big red button labeled _Coupler Ignition_ and bashes it with his fist. Seconds drag like dust devils across the barren yard, punctuated only by the groaning of metal expanding in the heat.

The elevator doesn't budge.

Nate clenches his jaw. A _door_ isn't going to stop him. Not now, not after how far he's come. "Get it open."

Miller touches a circular port marked _Pip-Boy Remote Link_. "Standard adapter plug, like what we use to run diagnostics on power armor. The pip-boy must be used as some kind of key. If we can get our hands on one, it might power up the elevator controls."

Turning over the yard—even literally when Nate flips a small crate in frustration—yields nothing. So Miller crouches down to unscrew the front panel and poke around. "If you're lucky, I can hotwire the control panel and trick it into thinking it's received a signal from the adapter plug."

"Not to doubt you, but is that possible?" Nate asks.

"Had to do something similar with a broken power armor port once, so I'd give it a solid maybe. Hand me that spanner."

* * *

Miller's plan proves to be a bust, yet she's the least disgruntled about it. Professional respect and a belligerent desire to find an exploitable loophole maintains her interest, if nothing else. Without a pip-boy and whatever software is loaded on it, there's no getting into Vault 111. So they scour the yard again, this time ranging beyond the chain-link perimeter to pursue any construction pieces that have been blown down the hill by the shock wave. Or rather, the rest of them labor under the sun while Sculley lounges in one of the prefabs. Alright, 'lounges' probably isn't the right word, not when he's sick to his stomach and has hurled chunks twice today.

No one has said anything to his face about it. No one protested when Brenner banished him to the sidelines.

Doesn't stop him from calling out criticism while the rest of them work. "Oi, Sarge, you want to lift with your legs, not your back!"

"Uh, Miller?" Metal shifts, screeching and clattering as if someone's trying to round up a herd of Giddyup Buttercups, and Brenner's head pops up above the rim of the dumpster, followed by her hand. "This what you're looking for?"

Nate grabs the thing in her grip and turns it over. It's some kind of wrist-mounted personal computer with various knobs along its side. RobCo's embossed logo on the casing promises its quality, contradicted by the cracked screen.

Miller makes her own inspection when he passes it along, and nods to herself as she pulls out the adapter plug. "Good find, Brenner!"

Except there's one problem: the pip-boy doesn't turn on. It's to be expected, really, but while Nate chokes back a noise of frustration Miller is eager at the prospect of cracking it open.

Brenner's voice floats out of the dumpster. "Hey, Prescott! Give me a hand over here?"

* * *

While Miller operates on the pip-boy, Nate alternates between pacing the yard and sitting by the drop off, wishing he and Kaelyn had wandered up here to take in the view back when there _was_ a view. Now the creek winding through the valley below is dark and sluggish, its evaporated bulk never replaced by meltwater. Maples stand like skeletons, so dry they rattle in the faintest breeze as if chattering among themselves about the folly of humans. Between their boughs he can catch a glimpse of the roofs in the cul-de-sac below, and his gaze is instinctively drawn to his home. He catches himself, but it's too late.

Time to wear a hole in the ground again. He could _dig_ his way into the vault before Miller gets the damn elevator working.

Brenner blocks Nate's path. "Hold on, buddy," she says. "We're almost there. Don't die from anticipation just yet."

"Not planning on it," he says.

Putting his restlessness to proper use, Nate forages for firewood as the sun descends low in the sky. He steers clear of Sanctuary Hills. After the sun sets behind mountains Nate still can't recall being there before, he takes Miller her dinner—fried slices of Cram—and sets the plate down beside her.

"I can't believe I'm the one saying this, but you should take a break. Come back with fresh eyes."

Miller chuckles as she wipes her hands on her fatigues. "I can't believe it either. But I suppose this means you aren't going to guilt me for taking a bathroom break."

"Wouldn't dream of it. Without you, I'm screwed."

Miller smiles a rare, full-fledged smile, her teeth flashing white against her black skin. "And don't forget it."

Sitting side-by-side, they eat in comfortable silence. Two strategically placed flashlights illuminate Miller's work area, but the prefab is still dingy.

Gratitude and regret split Nate's chest in two. He takes Miller's plate when she's finished but doesn't move. "In all seriousness, thank you. You've got your own family to worry about and you're still doing this for me. I owe you more than I can ever repay."

There's a pause before she responds. Her good cheer is a touch forced. "I only expect a lifetime supply of liquor for this. Preference for whiskey."

That pulls a chuckle from Nate, weary yet genuine. "You've got it, buddy."

Miller lowers her pliers to a toolbox she found and taps her fingers against her knee. Her wedding ring glints in the twilight. "You know… once you get your closure, I need mine."

Closure. Not _when you find your family, safe and sound…_

Nate clears his throat. "I understand."

He takes his leave after that to wash the dishes and then sits with his forearms propped on his knees, looking out towards Boston as the last burst of orange on the horizon wanes to gray. Brenner drops down beside him, her blonde hair leached to silver in the failing light. They don't talk.

A whoop echoes from the prefab and Miller leans around the doorway, hollering, "I've got it!"

Nate is on his feet and can't remember how. Something deep in the earth shudders and the great gear-shaped platform descends.

With no time to grab his power armor, Nate vaults over the lip of the hatch to land on the platform. Three hollow clangs and one curse from Sculley indicate the others have followed. The platform takes them down, down, and Nate abandons counting the seconds when it becomes counting minutes. He checks the fusion cell in his rifle, then the magazine in his pistol, to settle his nerves. It doesn't work.

 _Honey, I'm home. Just about._

The circle of sky above them is a black coin by the time the elevator grinds to a halt, just in time for the massive gear-shaped door to finish cycling open. Everyone knows better than to get in between Nate and the stairs, and he rushes up them three at a time. The catwalk rattles under his combat boots, and only once he's reached solid ground do the echoes fade to an uncanny silence.

The sign above his head reads _Vault 111: Welcome Home._

But _silence_ isn't quite the right word. In the distance water drips and machinery rumbles. The air itself seems to echo, reverberating on itself in that odd weightlessness that only comes from emptiness.

The entry is deserted.

"Nominal power," Miller murmurs, her voice carrying in the chilly air. "Lights and life support."

Nate's hand slides to the grip of his sidearm. "Hello!" He almost flinches as his own voice cuts through the ambiance. "Anyone down here?"

No one emerges to greet them or even berate them, and Nate will take the latter if it means things are normal down here. Every ensuing second with no response raises more hairs on the back of his neck.

"I take it that's a 'if we pretend no one's home, maybe they'll go away'?" Brenner suggests.

"Too bad for them I'm not leaving until I find my family." Nate checks his weapons again. Just in case. "Let's move."

The closest door is sealed tight and not even Miller can jimmy it open. Not without a battery and some elbow grease, at least.

"Over here!" Sculley waves them over to another door across the room. This one is pliantly open.

The corridors are long with frequent corners; ground lights cast blue-gray shadows on the curved ceiling. Circular walls lend the vault a cave-like atmosphere, aided by the subterranean chill. But maybe that's just the knowledge that thousands of tonnes of rock dangle unseen above the roof. It sure would be cramped down here with people wandering about. Tight.

 _Contained._ The word springs into Nate's mind.

Footsteps echo down the corridors in a way that makes him look over his shoulder. Only once. Yep. Only once.

Shortly after that they find the first body. Face down in the corridor, clothed in a blue jumpsuit, face rotting into the floor. It's decidedly fresher than any other corpse they've encountered since the bombs fell. Cockroaches scurry away from the corpse when Miller prods it with her booted toes.

"Ugh, that smell." Sculley gags and hurries to wrap his scarf around his nose and mouth.

"The hell?" Unease squirms in Nate's gut much like the roaches skittering across the floor. "No. This isn't right. The vault was supposed to be safe. They were supposed to be _safe_ down here."

"Explains why no one answered our hail." Miller whispers. Her voice carries in the dark. "But raises the question of what happened down here."

Nate makes a pained noise low in his throat. _Kaelyn. Shaun. Where are you?_

With every fresh—figuratively speaking—body they find, Nate's stomach drops further. All this time, dread has been a deep, unknowable thing that lurks over his shoulder. Fueled now by the reality of these corpses, that same dread flash-freezes into a corporeal form. It conjures the image of Kaelyn's wavy brown hair concealing a decaying face, or a body clutching a small rotting bundle.

"Is anyone alive down here?" Sculley asks. His eyes flash to Nate and he clears his throat.

"There have to be survivors somewhere." Nate picks up the pace, unwilling to accept any pity thrown his way like an old bone. His nerves tighten with every step and his fingers aches from their white-knuckled grip on his rifle.

They haven't explored the entirety of the vault yet. It's too soon to say nobody made it.

A sliding door hisses open at their approach and they duck into a spacious office governed by a semi-circular desk. While Sculley knocks on the tabletop to check if it's real or a veneer—the latter, but a good-looking one—Brenner rights the chair and nudges aside the body of a man in a lab coat to access the terminal. Miller makes a noise of interest and makes a beeline for a lock box on the wall that holds some kind of rifle.

"Nate." Brenner's stilted tone raises the hairs on the back of his neck. "You need to see this."

Heart in his throat, Nate stands at her side with no memory of crossing the room. She points at the green text scrawled across the screen.

 _Vault 111 is designed to test the long-term effects of suspended animation on unaware human subjects._

Time slows to a crawl. The lights waver, brightening then dimming then brightening again. Brenner is halfway through her inhale; the others are still turning their heads, sensing imminent disaster. All at once reality _snaps_ back into place like an elastic band stretched beyond its limits.

Nate feels sick.

"My god." He paces in a tight circle. Runs a hand through his hair. "Why would Vault-Tec do this? Long term effects… on unaware human subjects. No. That can't be right. It can't be."

"Cryogenic stasis? Damn." Miller looks between the rifle in its lock box and the terminal. "Doesn't that mean your family might still be alive, if they've been frozen? Provided the systems are stable."

In that moment, Nate could kiss her. "I hope so."

"Possible," Brenner answers. "If this is an experiment, no one knows how stable the technology is. That's why they're testing it."

Miller's mouth twists into something rueful. "True. Any clues on what happened to everyone else down here?" She steps past Nate to lean over Brenner's shoulder, and along the way she touches his shoulder to steady him.

A few key strokes and Brenner grunts. "They only had enough supplies for a hundred and eighty days. The Overseer refused to open the vault in the absence of an all-clear signal—yeah, I can't possibly imagine why nobody's heard from Vault-Tec's execs since the bombs dropped. So then security mutinied against the scientists. Six months… this went down at least two months ago. No wonder the place stinks."

It's enough to piece together the rest.

Nate glances down at the nearby body. The Overseer's. The man who used Kaelyn and Shaun and everybody else as lab rats. Any sympathy he has shrivels under the weight of a sudden anger that sucks him under a boiling wave. Heat prickles across his skin with fine needles. "Let's go already."

By the time they've searched the common area and dormitory, the silence is expected. Living bodies leave an imprint in the air, a subtle warmth that signals a nearby presence, and its absence is noticeable. No one wants to linger beyond a perfunctory check, and Nate wonders if anyone else is thinking of HQ at Geneseo.

If not for an observation window in one of the main corridors, they might have wandered right by without realizing what section of the vault they've entered. But that cut-away into a darkened room, illuminated only by emergency lights, stops Nate faster than a bullet.

"The hell?"

The room is filled with rows upon rows of stasis pods—that's all they can possibly be. Thick cables snake across the ceiling, connecting giant canisters to the pods like silver umbilical cords. Ground lights shine on the front hatches; squares of white stark against the deep blue shadows that lurk near the walls. A fine mist, noticeable only when it floats directly into a beam of light, drifts from the ultracold cables to flutter along the ground. It's too dark to see inside the pods' tiny windows, to see any occupants inside.

Damn. Just… damn.

With a final glance towards the observation window, Nate strides down the hall to the closest cryogenic array. This chamber is narrow, with cryo pods lining the walls like rows of soldiers, and as he trots down the stairs it grows noticeably colder—which is a feat given the vault's general chill. In front of the first pod, he swallows and looks through the frost-rimmed glass. Normally the prospect of snow is enough to tighten his nerves, thanks to his tour in Alaska, but this time dread skitters down his spine for an entirely different reason.

Mrs Callahan is frozen on the other side.

He's not sure if this new reason is better or worse, frankly.

Peering in each window, relief and regret bite at him each time it isn't Kaelyn. Mr Callahan. Mrs Able. Others whose faces he can't identify, either because he truly doesn't know them or because the frost coating the window warps their visages beyond recognition.

"Vital signs of all occupants are stable," Brenner calls. The mist softens her voice. She stands by a wall-mounted terminal. "You want pod C7."

Nate's breath catches.

There she is. Eyes closed, ice glistening on her dark lashes. So still she might be lifeless. Little Shaun is bundled in her arms with his face pressed to her chest. Maybe it's just the dim lighting, but her brown skin seems dull and gray, her hair stiff with crusted frost. Pressing one hand to the hatch, only to be surprised at how hot it is against his palm, Nate leans as close as he can to get a better look, pulse loud in his ears.

And then it isn't _enough_. They need to be _free_ and he needs to know they're alive, needs to hold them, needs to see how big his son has grown, _damn it all._

Time to get them out of that bloody freezer. Nate tugs on the lid's handle but it won't budge. Whirling, he spies a control panel hooked up to their pod with bright red buttons and—

"Wait!" Brenner plants herself between Nate and the control panel. Grabs his arm when he tries to skirt around her. At his glare, she squeezes his wrist. "If we pull them out now, we have no idea what's going to happen. There could be a procedure to thaw them out safely that we don't know about."

His gaze flicks between Brenner's beseeching expression and the observation window where Kaelyn's silhouette lingers behind the glass, dark and still. The most he can make out of Shaun from here is his white swaddling. "That's my _family_ in there, Dylan. We have no idea if cryo is even safe. The longer they're in there, the more danger they're in."

"You're right, that's entirely possible." Here comes the but: "Just give me three days to review the research logs and prep in case of a medical emergency." As an aside, she mutters, "There has to be a bloody instruction manual somewhere."

He grits his teeth. Truth be told, he isn't sure if the recalcitrance in his gut resists the prospect of waiting, or putting his family in more danger by being hasty. "And if something goes wrong while you're still figuring it out?"

"Someone will monitor their vitals at all times. If we detect any dangerous anomalies, we'll pull them out. I promise."

Nate looks between his squad and his family again. Lingers on Kaelyn.

So close and yet so far.

"Fine. Just—work quickly."

* * *

Nate doesn't expect to sleep no matter how his eyes itch, but exhaustion is heavier than worry, dragging him down below currents of fear to where oblivion rests at the bottom of the world. An icy touch on his cheek makes him start, blinking away images of Kaelyn's frozen hand beseeching him for help. Of Shaun's icy head pressed against his jaw. Scrubbing away the stray drop of water, Nate scowls at the leaky ceiling. As he swings his feet over the side of the mattress, he realizes that none of his squad are nearby.

The absence of barrack noise, of the base continuing to function in the deep hours before A-shift, make his ears strain. There should be the sounds of breathing and occasional thrashing from the other personnel stacked neatly in their rows of bunks. Patrols thunking by at regular intervals. And underneath it all, the slick hum of the reactor powering the base.

But no. Those days are done, and there's no going back.

A box of Sugar Bombs and a clean bowl sit on a table in the common area, so Nate takes the box and eats his entire recommended daily sugar intake in one go. Stuffing his face can't distract him from the guilt that nips at his heels. After brushing his hands on his trousers, he straps his sidearm to his thigh—a habit too ingrained to shake now, and he'd be lying if he said the vault isn't creepy as hell. Comfortably armed, he sets off in search of Brenner.

Nails it in one: she's in the modest clinic, perched in front of the CMO's terminal. She starts at the movement in the corner of her eye, but relaxes when she recognizes him. "Morning, Nate."

Leaning his hip on the doctor's desk, he folds his arms across his chest and fights a shiver. Did Vault-Tec even install central heating down here? "Has there been any change in their vitals? Anything at all?"

"None. Life signs holding steady. I've been reviewing the logs and the research they've compiled so far. Miller helped me with some of the technical details of the cryogenic array." Brenner leans back, eliciting a pained squeak from her chair. "Fascinating stuff if not for the fact it's an unethical experiment using unsuspecting civilians as guinea pigs. No, I lie. It's fascinating stuff even though it's an unethical experiment—don't look at me like that, Prescott."

He's going to ignore the 'fascinating' part. For his own sanity, if nothing else. "Why didn't anybody wake me up?"

Brenner pauses. "Didn't have the heart. I told the others not to. You needed the rest. And yes, that's my medical opinion."

Alright, maybe catching a few Zs in a proper bed did Nate some good. He wouldn't be too stubborn to admit it but, well, he's too stubborn to admit it. If he thinks too much about it, it doesn't feel right that he slept while his family is still frozen not one hundred feet away. "Alright. What can I do with my newfound energy to help?"

"Let's see… we need inventory of what supplies are still down here. We've got fresh water, I know that much. The vault is tapping into a bore and Miller gave the purifiers her stamp of approval. As for food, the Overseer's logs said they were almost out, and we can't thaw everyone out if we can't feed them. I need to prep the clinic and—oh. We also have to take care of the bodies down here and quickly. The last thing we need is an outbreak of disease. Take your pick on where to start."

As much as moving corpses does not make Nate's top ten favorite activities, or even top one hundred, the idea of leaving Miller and Sculley to it sits poorly. It's grim work, hauling bodies to the exit zone and taking a gag break every five minutes or so. As far as they can tell, all the bodies belong to Vault-Tech staff. After scrubbing the gooey stains on the floor with the harshest astringent Brenner can conjure, they return to the surface to dig graves and retrieve their power armor suits, which thankfully haven't wandered off in the night.

Sweaty and grime-streaked, Nate catches up with Miller while she's poking around the prefabs. "If my family—" Swallowing around a sudden lump in his throat, Nate tries again. "If this—doesn't work, I'll go with you to find yours."

Miller searches his face, silent and intent, her black eyes flitting over his features. Finally, she nods once. "I understand."

Back in the vault, Nate scouts the showers and shaves for the first time in months. The hot water is _heavenly,_ loosening the grime caked on his skin and the tight muscles underneath. Turning the faucet as hot as he can tolerate, his skin turns pink before he even starts scrubbing. By the time he scrounges for a towel his hands and feet are lobster-red. Dressing back in his filthy clothes afterward feels like a travesty, but at least he can run a hand along his now-smooth jaw. Goodbye, scratchy beard.

Back in the infirmary, Nate shoos Brenner away from the cleaning so she can return to her research. No point having the medic doing grunt work instead of figuring out the cryogenic array. Obeying her edict to 'disinfect _everything',_ he works his way through the clinic's surgical tools and sorts them as per Brenner's preferred workspace arrangement. Once an hour, she gets up to stretch and join him for ten minutes, claiming she needs the breaks. Nate accepts her help without comment; the last thing he needs is to irritate her by getting on her case about it.

It's on one such occasion that Nate pulls a cardboard box off the bottom shelf in the storeroom and pauses when he sees its contents. Brenner peers over his shoulder at the supply of condoms.

She's the first to chortle. "Say what you will about Vault-Tec, but they knew what would happen when you locked a group of people in a confined space."

Her laughter is infectious and soon enough Nate leans back against the wall, laughing far more than the discovery calls for, to the point it borders on hysteria. Sucking down one breath after another to ease the ache in his belly, he scrubs a hand over his face to wipe away tears. Brenner likewise covers her face with both hands. When the last of their amusement fades they have to return to work.

But not before she elbows Nate in the ribs with a smirk. "Fortunate for you and Kaelyn, huh?"

Rolling his eyes, he shoves her off and counts his lucky stars it hadn't been Sculley to make this particular discovery.

Two days later, Nate drops his clipboard on Brenner's desk. The clinic is dusted and organized to her satisfaction. Miller and Sculley have made headway checking the vault's life support system and mapping the rest of the vault. There are three cryogenic arrays in all, but not all of the pods are occupied. Miller has only unkind things to say about the vault's layout, particularly regarding the walkway around the reactor core.

"You want to minimize through traffic around the most vital piece of equipment in this whole damn place," she fumes, "not invite every dumbass and their dog to take a tour through engineering."

That night—or what their chronometer claims is night, not that anyone volunteers to head surface-side to check—they pull up chairs around a table in the mess hall and review their progress over mac 'n' cheese.

"Finished countin' our food," Sculley says. "Provided human stays off the menu, we've got about a fortnight plus a week from our own supplies. If we tighten up the rationing, we could squeeze out another week. Then it's onto shoe leather."

"The vault's in good condition," Miller says. "If you can secure a food supply this place will last you a long time. Air ventilation systems are holding steady and you have a source of power."

Nate doesn't miss the way she says _you_ instead of _we_. "We're in better shape medicine-wise than food-wise. With few people down here who were, ah, awake, they didn't burn through much of the pharmacy."

"Speaking of the residents, I've reviewed all the research logs and have a handle on the stasis process." Brenner sets her fork in the center of her plate with unnecessary precision. "Whenever you're ready, we can wake up your family."

They are the words Nate has been waiting for and now, in this moment, he can't speak.

"So this is it?" Miller asks, leaning forward in her seat.

At Brenner's nod, something in Nate's chest cracks and swells.

Instead of heading straight to his bunk, Nate wanders to Bay C to visit his family. Pressing one hand flat on the lid, he whispers, "Tomorrow. I promise. Love you both." Saying goodnight would be too weird, so with a final lingering look he heads to bed.

After a tense night of little sleep and dreams he prefers not to linger on—of icy statues and eyes that never open again—Nate gives up and pads into the adjoining mess hall. Miller and Sculley are still sound asleep so he takes care not to disturb them. Brenner's bunk is empty; the woman herself leans against the kitchenette in the mess.

She glances up at his entry. "Can't sleep either?"

"Too wound up." He leans on the counter beside her. "I'm glad it's morning."

She gives him an odd look. "It's 1:30. Technically morning, I suppose."

"Oh."

Drumming her fingers silently on the counter top behind her, Brenner sinks into her thoughts with that faraway look that signals she can't be reached until she comes back to earth. Which she does a minute a later, fingers halting their flighty tempo. "Screw it. Neither of us are going back to sleep now. Let's grab some coffee and do this."

Caffeine seems like an unnecessary stimulant when excitement and anxiety surge through his nerves, giving him a double rush. It sure drives away the last of his lethargy. "I'm done with waiting."

Instant coffee may be the lowest of the low, but it's now worth its weight in gold. Any caffeine is good enough for Brenner, who inhales the curling steam while she waits for her brew to cool below scalding. They drink and rinse their mugs in silence as Nate gets more keyed up. It's almost like the night before Christmas, where you lie awake at some unholy hour of the morning waiting for your parents to get up so you can open your presents—except the present involved is a Schroedinger's cat. Schroedinger's wife and son?

"Nate." Brenner bites the inside of her cheek. "I'm going to do everything I can to get your family out safe, okay? And your neighbors after that."

"I know that." He holds out an arm and she leans into his side, wrapping an arm around his waist. "It's gonna be what it's gonna be. And I want to thank you, right now, for trying. What, you thought I would blame you if—" his thread of easy humor fails him, locking his throat with pre-emptive grief, but Brenner knows what he means.

"Thanks. I wasn't sure how you'd react if things go south." She raises her hands, turning them over in the dim lights, watching shadows pool in the creases of her palms. "Be nice to heal instead of harm for once."

He squeezes her shoulder. "So this is redemption?"

Her face hardens. "No. It's just the right thing to do." She weasels free and heads for the door. On the threshold, she glances over her shoulder with an unexpected, mischievous smile. "Besides, I still have dreams about Kaelyn in that tight little pinstriped skirt. _Woof."_

Nate knows which skirt she's referring to, and he can't disagree with the sentiment. Even so, he fixes her with an unimpressed look. "You're not supposed to admit it while I'm in the room, you know."

With an unrepentant laugh, Brenner trots down the hall. Nate grabs his boots and follows her to the clinic, where they pack a medical bag and prep a gurney. Rather than shy away from the possibility Kaelyn or Shaun might be in such dire condition they need it, Nate is equipped with enough medical training to be reassured by this preparation. They steer the gurney on its squeaky wheels to Bay C and leave it by the doorway above the stairs.

Heart pulsing low and quick in his chest, Nate stands by Kaelyn's pod while Brenner checks the nearby control panel.

"Ready?"

Nate draws in a breath and nods. "Do it."


	3. Chapter 3

Following the aroma of fresh coffee, Kaelyn Prescott shambles out of the bathroom to the kitchen where Codsworth hovers with the pot.

"Ah, good morning, mum! Your coffee." He pours the brew into a waiting mug on the counter.

Hooking the nearest stool with her foot, Kaelyn leans on the counter and inhales the rich caffeine-laden steam to chase off lingering lethargy. One good thing about being home alone is that she can use Nate's ration to double the strength. Her favorite lipstick leaves plum kisses along the mug's rim.

As Codsworth putters about in the kitchen making breakfast, she flips through the Boston Bugle while the TV murmurs in the background. War reports smack with self-righteous propaganda—she scans for any mention of Geneseo, where Nate's company had been assigned after Anchorage, but with luck its absence means nothing bad has happened on base. There are also mentions of the food riots. Another outbreak of the New Plague. A reminder to always comply with the National Guard at the checkpoints scattered around Boston.

Codsworth deposits a plate of toast by her elbow when she's sunk into an article on an arrest made at the CIT, and she thanks him absently. A cry peals down the hallway and she glances up, attuned to the sound after six months with her son. Shaun is fed first thing in the morning; it isn't his hunger cry.

As Kaelyn brushes crumbs off her fingers, Codsworth floats past her, calling, "Sounds like someone made a stinky! I'll take care of it right away, mum, while you finish breakfast!"

It's always impressive he's able to sound so cheered at the prospect of changing soiled diapers. Even so, she devours the last of her breakfast and pads down the hall after him. Leaning against the doorway, she hangs back rather than risk being hit with an errant sawblade. Why General Atomics thought that and a _flamethrower_ are vital tools for a domestic robot, she'll never know.

The infinite gentleness Codsworth uses to handle her baby never fails to make her pause, even if Shaun is still squalling indignantly. As he rewraps Shaun's swaddling, one eye stalk swivels in the direction of the door. "Ah, Miss Kaelyn! I've changed young master Shaun but as you can hear, he won't calm down. Perhaps you'll do better with him. I don't think he's quite used to my appearance yet."

"I told you we should draw a face on your chassis, Codsworth," she teases. As she steps up to the dresser, Shaun stops crying. "Babies have simple facial recognition."

"And I asked you not to ruin my chrome finish," he retorts, artificial irises narrowing as all three optics focus on her. "I would be the laughingstock of the neighborhood. Take pity on your poor Mr Handy, mum."

"You're right. What would the neighbors think?" Kaelyn leans over the dressing table to tickle Shaun's stomach and he giggles.

He kicks his feet through the swaddling, big brown eyes fixing unerringly on her. Flecks of green—inherited from Nate, no doubt—soften the hazel. Shaun lifts an arm to her, his face still red and scrunched, and she catches his hand. His small fingers curl in her palm, his skin a few shades lighter than her own. She glances over her shoulder to find Codsworth has already made a discreet exit, shutting the nursery door behind him.

A crisp breeze shivers through the maples outside the window, and a fiery swirl of leaves drifts over the fence and into the yard. Not a single cloud diminishes the sky's deep blue. Their neat lawn is still green despite the thickening layer of frost that coats it every morning, and she spies a loose picket in the fence she'll have to secure before letting Shaun roam free.

Kaelyn hoists her son in her arms so he can look out the window. "Doesn't it look nice out there? It should be warm enough you can play in the yard today. We'd best enjoy it while it's still green."

Her baby is more interested in stuffing his fingers in her mouth.

"Mum?" Codsworth's call, muffled yet shrill, carries through the door. "You should come see this!"

It sounds more serious than a milk bottle slipping out of his pincers again. Kaelyn pads down the hall, calling, "What's wrong, Codsworth?"

He floats in the living room, optics fixed on the TV.

"—followed by... yes, flashes. Blinding flashes. Sounds of explosions. We're trying to get confirmation... we, uh, seem to have lost contact with our affiliate stations."

She can only watch, silent, petrified, as the nebulous fears of the last decade solidify before her eyes. Waiting for a denial, that there's been some kind of mistake.

The anchorman draws in a shaky breath, listening to someone off-camera, and shuffles his papers to occupy his hands. "We do have... confirmed reports. I repeat, confirmed reports of nuclear detonations in New York and Pennsylvania." The anchorman crumples, burying his face in his hands—and the TV cuts out.

Fear pierces her with the curved fangs of a cobra.

Instinct takes over. _Get to safety._

Heart pounding against her ribs, she tightens her grip on Shaun. "Who's my brave little boy? We need to get you to the vault. _Now."_

Shaun blinks up at her, wide awake now, and gurgles. He wraps his arms around her neck and settles against her shoulder, making a noise of complaint when her quick gait jostles him. Shoving her feet into her shoes, Kaelyn calls, "Codsworth! Stay safe, sweetie."

"And your family as well, mum. Oh my…"

She leaves him floating in living room, one optic trained on her as she bursts onto the street. The sky is such a deep blue she has to blink away bright spots.

In the space of a breath, the tranquility of Sanctuary Hills is shattered. Shouts and cries pierce the fall morning. The street is abuzz with panicking people, some fleeing, others hugging their loved ones on the sidewalk, others just watching the sky. A car speeds down the road, almost running over Hawthorne, but screeches to a halt when it finds the bridge blocked by a traffic jam. The Vault-Tec van is parked outside Ms Rosa's house, and Kaelyn is glad she'd signed up months ago.

At the bend in the street a National Guardsman stands by Mrs Able's yard and gestures to the well-worn track, directing her fleeing neighbors up the hill. "Vault participants this way!"

Her chest tightens at the sight of a soldier in his green fatigues, but with Shaun whimpering in her arms there's no time to think of Nate. So she lowers her head and scales the hill in record time, her loafers slipping on eroded dirt. Another soldier grabs her elbow and assists her up a particularly steep incline with a hurried, "That way, miss!"

People crowd around the gate to the vault's construction zone. Shouts break out at the front, where the Vault-Tec rep takes on the soldier blocking the gate, only to shrink back when one of the flanking guards in power armor raises his oversized gun. The crowd writhes, people backing up and screaming. With his hands raised, the Vault-Tec rep retreats, the crowd parting behind him to avoid being in the line of fire, and bolts down the hill, yelling threats over his shoulder all the while.

The soldier standing at the gates remains unmoved. "If you're in the program step forward! Otherwise return to your homes!"

Kaelyn weasels her way through the crowd, earning an elbow in the ribs and a scowl from Mr Summer, who's wearing nothing but a blue bathrobe. She eyes the flanking guards askance; power armor looks much bigger in real life than it does on TV. "We're on the list!" she says before the soldier can do anything more than scowl over his clipboard. She keeps one eye on the soldier in power armor—and the minigun directed at the crowd. "Prescott, Kaelyn and Shaun."

The man consults his clipboard. Every second he spends scanning the list, her nerves tighten. His scowl deepens. "Adult female. Infant. Go ahead."

Behind him, the Goliath in power armor relaxes, lowering his weapon to point at the ground. With hurried thanks, Kaelyn skirts around the guards and tries to ignore the indignant shouts behind her. Someone hurls obscenities at her back—only for the crowd to hush at the clank of power armor.

Another guard—not army personnel but Vault-Tec security, judging by his uniform—waves her past the packing crates and points to a platform at the crest of the hill. "Quickly! Stand in the center of the elevator!"

"What's going to happen to all those people outside the gate?"

"We're doing everything we can. Now get moving!"

Several of her neighbors cluster atop the vault platform. Mrs Able gives her a tight smile and squeezes her arm. They wait in silence, looking anywhere but at each other or the crowd at the gate. On any other day, the view from the drop-off would be spectacular, overlooking Sanctuary Hills and Concord, while Boston's skyscrapers stand tall in the distance. Kaelyn's heart pulses in her wrists, her ears, her throat. With one eye watching the sky, she rocks Shaun, but he won't settle.

Now they can only wait.

Realizing it might be her last chance, Kaelyn kisses Shaun's forehead. "I love you."

To Nate, wherever he is out there, she thinks: _We love you._

Someone screams, pointing at the horizon—

The sky _burns_. Blue to orange in the span of a heartbeat. Heralded by a thunderous boom, a mushroom cloud blooms on the horizon like a malicious flower. Its iconic shape halts every thought in her head.

Kaelyn can only gape, the roaring in her ears louder than the shock wave rushing over the hills.

In the distance, past all the noise: "Now! Send it down _now!"_

Instinct has her spinning, clutching Shaun to her chest and hunching over him as the shock wave crests over Concord, and she braces for it to hit her back—

The platform jostles under her feet and lowers. Dust and radioactive particles surge above their heads, a dry brown wave that blocks the light, consuming all sound in a singular roar. It tears at Kaelyn's hair; she tucks Shaun's head under her chin and breathes into her shoulder.

Then it passes, leaving the shrinking sky above a wan brown.

Kaelyn listens, but hears only the church bells in her ears. Then grinding elevator gears, shocked breaths from her neighbors, and Shaun's distressed mewl.

"It's okay. It's okay. We're okay." She croons this over and over, as much for herself as for him. Her hands shake, her arms shake, her whole body shakes. He frees one tiny hand to fist in the front of her blouse and she shifts her feet to better settle with his weight.

The elevator is slow. Too slow. With no indication of how far they have yet to go, with no distractions from her silent neighbors, Kaelyn's thoughts circle like buzzards seeking proof of death for the unmoving body on the ground. Codsworth at home, her _tatta_ and brother in the city, her friends. The bomb didn't hit Boston itself so they could have a chance. Codsworth could have a chance. Her family…

 _Oh, Nate._

Drawing in a breath, Kaelyn tells herself he's on the list, she'd made sure of that, and he can still get in. The army has access to top of the line equipment and supplies that can keep him safe. Despite her stormy relationship with her _tatta_ and brother, she hopes they can get to safety, too.

Such stubborn insistence, the obstinate sister of denial, wards off the awareness lurking in her periphery.

Shaun fusses, confused by the unfamiliar sensation of descending on an elevator, peering at the quasi-familiar faces. Mr Russell eyes Shaun the way one might a loaded gun. Kaelyn adjusts his swaddling, tucking his hand under the blanket every time he wriggles it free, and hopes the vault itself isn't going to be this cold. If only she'd had time to grab Shaun's beanie.

The knowledge of what just happened, what they'd hoped would never happen, presses down on her with the same weight as the chill in the air.

This can't be happening.

Finally, a gate comes into view and beyond it—Vault 111 itself. Kaelyn has no idea how far underground they are. And her neighbors above ground are lost, panicked, possibly dea—

 _Now's not the time,_ she tells herself. Shaun needs to be settled first.

As the gate lifts, a white man with a mustache and clipboard stands between two security guards. "Not to worry, folks! We'll get you situated in your new home. Welcome to Vault 111! A better future, underground!"

Right now Kaelyn will settle for a safe future.

Vault 111's first impression would be impressive if not for the current situation. For all that is is a marvel of engineering, _homey_ doesn't describe the boxy steel construction with raw cabling running along the walls. The architecture better suits a sterile research platform than a new home, even if underground bunkers have limited decor options. Wan lights and overbright smiles from the staff illuminate the cavernous exit zone. Of course. These people just lost their homes, too.

After receiving their vault suits, the new residents huddle in a clump of bright clothes and pale faces, like tropical birds clustering together as a tiger prowls below their branch.

Shaun gurgles, reaching up to tug on Kaelyn's collar. "Dadada..."

It's enough to send an ice pick through her breastbone. Ducking her head, Kaelyn presses a kiss to the top of his head. "Take a look around, Shaun. This is our new home. It doesn't have windows, but we can work with that, right?"

A nearby doctor chuckles and gestures for her group to follow him. He epitomizes the image of a man of science, cast in monochrome whites and grays. "You'll love it here. This is one of our most advanced facilities. Not that the others aren't nice, of course. If you'll head this way, you'll be able to get dressed. Then we have a few medical items to get through before we begin orientation."

He leads their group to a bathroom and waits outside. Mrs Able volunteers to hold Shaun while Kaelyn changes but when she hands him over, he starts crying.

Kaelyn leans over him so he can see her face and tickles his tummy. "I won't be going far, my little guy. Just need a moment of privacy. Bye bye for now."

She slips into an empty stall and wrestles with the blue suit that's unlike anything she's ever worn before. The vault suit is tight around her hips and breasts but loose at the shoulder. After smoothing down the front—a needless gesture, since the fabric is too thick to wrinkle like her blouse—she bundles her old clothes under her arm.

 _At least my ankles aren't swelling anymore or these boots would be a_ nightmare.

The bravado rings false even in the privacy of her own mind.

Kaelyn bows her head and pinches the bridge of her nose to ward off the welling heat in her eyes.

Her neighbors. Her friends. Her family.

Nate.

A loud cry pierces her fugue. Shaun is red-faced and bawling in Mrs Able's arms, and Kaelyn shoots her an apologetic smile. "Here I am."

Shaun reaches out to her as she scoops him into her arms, his hands roaming her shoulder, her chin, the collar of her new vault suit. When his hand next comes in range of her mouth, she presses a kiss against his palm and wishes his delighted giggle can ease cold tightness behind her breastbone.

One of the staff members shows them to a locker room where they can stow their gear. "It's only temporary," she assures them with a smile that's blinding against her black skin. She drops her voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Officially we're only supposed to wear these suits—looking to the future, right?—but sentimentality can be a powerful thing. I'll keep your belongings safe. Just go down the hall and we'll get the last of the housekeeping outta the way."

As her locker clicks shut, Kaelyn realizes this pigeon hole contains all her worldly belongings.

"Those of you who are dressed, follow me," the scientist says. He ushers a clump of people down the corridor to a chamber lined with two rows of what look like personal capsules, like something an astronaut might pilot, or even the Pulowski's Preservers installed in the streets.

"If you'll step into the pods, we can begin the process. In addition to decontamination, it will also depressurize you before we head deeper into the vault. It may feel strange, but all you need to do is relax. It'll be over in a few moments."

Kaelyn does as instructed, securing Shaun in the crook of one arm so she can grab one of the hand rails. The step up isn't so bad, but she has little space to maneuver with a nervous infant in her arms. The upholstery is made from real leather, and it almost seems wasteful when there's no truly comfortable way to lean back.

When the lid shuts, her shaky breaths echo in the enclosed space. Outside sound cuts off, incongruous with the activity she can see outside the tiny window as the others step into their own pods. Shaun whimpers, and she hums a lullaby to him while they wait.

An automated voice chimes, _"Resident secure. Occupant vitals: normal. Procedure complete..."_

Instead of opening, the tell-tale hiss of an air pump bounces around the tight confines of the pod. Kaelyn's head snaps up, seeking the source, her heart jumping despite the edict to relax. Shaun makes a sleepy noise of protest at being jostled, yet his eyes slip closed.

That's when Kaelyn notices her own eyes prickling.

 _"In five. Four..."_

All at once, her head feels heavy, and she clutches Shaun tighter so he doesn't slip out of her lead-lined arms. The mechanized voice echoes, faint and distant, as if they're underwater.

When did it get so chilly in here?

 _"Three..."_

The last thing she hears is the sigh of the gas feed.

Cold white.

 _"Manual override initiated. Cryogenic stasis suspended."_

A shudder wracks her from the crown of her head to the soles of her feet. Her heart flits in her chest, so very loud. Her own breaths, expelled through chattering teeth, bounce off the lid of the pod, and she blinks away the lethargy shrouding her. Shaun shifts against her chest and sucks in a breath, face scrunching at the temperature. She brushes her knuckles over his cheek, causing him to wriggle his feet against her ribs.

The pod is dark. The porthole is coated in frost. But she can tell the chamber outside is dark, too.

With a too-loud hiss, the lid retracts, allowing warmer air to flood the pod. The icy bands of steel constricting her chest give way and she doubles over, coughing and spluttering for air. Frost and antiseptic prick her tongue. Her head aches from their combined power. Hands catch her shoulder to steady her, but when she looks up—

He's an entirely different man to the doctor.

"Nate?"

Before he finishes saying "it's me, honey", she's closed the distance between them and thrown an arm around his neck. Nate pulls her more firmly against him, arms wrapping around her and Shaun, and the only thing moderating his enthusiasm is their baby sandwiched between them. He presses a trio of kisses to the top of her head as she trembles, relieved beyond measure. Kaelyn goes one better: she grabs his collar and yanks him down for a proper, if breathless, kiss.

"I thought I'd never see you again."

He gives a watery laugh, and it's the most beautiful sound in the world. "I'm pleased to inform you that you thought wrong. Are you and Shaun alright?" He reaches out with trembling fingers to stroke Shaun's dark tuft of hair, a tremulous joy lighting his smile. "How's my little man? You are so much bigger than I remember. I hope you've been on your best behavior for Mommy."

"We're okay. I was more worried about you." Sniffling, Kaelyn leans back to see his dear face, to reassure herself that this is really happening, and Nate loosens his hold, if reluctantly. "How on earth did you get down here so fast? You must have seen the bomb go off."

Nate's expression shifts. His eyes darken.

Beside him, Dylan Brenner shifts on her feet. When Kaelyn notices her for the first time, Brenner offers her a smile. "Good to see you."

Wondering what else she's missed, she glances around and stares. The room is still dark, and the vault personnel have vanished, and the decontamination pods—they're all closed, with darkened faces lurking behind the glass.

"No. Something's wrong here." Kaelyn takes a wary half-step back, eyes darting around the room. "Where is everybody? What's going on?"

Nate reaches for her shoulder and his touch burns through the fabric. "You're right. There's a lot going on here and I'll explain everything, I promise. But right now I want Dylan to check you and Shaun out. Make sure you're okay."

Kaelyn's gaze flits between Nate and Brenner. "You talk while she works."

"Deal." Nate holds out an arm and she leans into his side, burrowing against his welcome heat.

Her nose runs, all but numb, and she can't feel her toes. Instead of easing her headache, the warmer air has only made her temples throb harder. Draping his arm around her shoulders, he guides her to the nearby stairs. When she's settled with Shaun in her lap, Nate sits beside her. Unable to keep his hands off her, he smooths a hand down her back.

Brenner settles on the stair below and unpacks her medical kit beside her. "Who's first? With the disclaimer that I never studied pediatrics."

"Shaun first." He hasn't cried yet even though he's in a strange place surrounded by strange people. Kaelyn shifts her son on her lap and loosens his swaddling.

At the first brush of cold air, Shaun squirms. Brenner at least warms the stethoscope between her palms before pressing it against his chest. He wriggles at the contact, face scrunching, sucking in a shocked breath. Over Brenner's shoulder, Kaelyn can see out the door at the opposite end of the room. The vault is dark and quiet and dripping.

She glances at Nate, raising an expectant eyebrow. "Are you going to tell me what's going on? Those decontamination pods…" Her eyes circuit the room again, wondering if she'd really seen people inside or if they were strange reflections on the windows. "They weren't really for decontamination, were they? Is there even a deeper level to the vault?"

Nate hums a reluctant agreement, his fingers tightening against her back. "No, they weren't for decon. Vault-Tec was experimenting with cryogenic stasis."

She closes her eyes. "How long?"

"It's been eight months since the bombs dropped."

Eight months.

Eight _months._

Her stomach drops.

"What? That can't be—" Kaelyn cuts herself off. Nate wouldn't lie to her about it. That's the only thing that pierces the shock settling around her shoulders like an shawl woven from ice. "I don't— it doesn't feel like any time has passed."

Nate and Brenner both give her sympathetic looks. Shaun makes an unhappy noise, dangerously close to a squall, and Kaelyn busies herself with shushing him while Brenner checks his hands and feet for signs of frostbite.

Her restless gaze travels the room again, skating over the sealed pods lining the walls. "So everyone else is still… frozen? We have to get them out too."

"We will, when we can. But right now my focus is on you." Nate's gaze, dark and intent, doesn't waver from her.

"Shouldn't Vault-Tec's staff be here? If this is an experiment…"

Both Nate and Brenner trade a look, and a fresh thrill of alarm runs down her spine.

The words drag themselves from Nate's chest, slow and unwilling, like a chain-gang of convicts trudging to a quarry. "While you were, ah, sleeping, there was a mutiny. If anyone survived, they left the vault."

Oh. Well. She tries to formulate a response but her brain stopped engaging after _mutiny_.

The moment Brenner declares she's finished, Kaelyn rewraps Shaun, frowning at how cool the fabric is. Nate lifts Shaun out of her arms with care. "I've got him."

Already unnerved from everything that's happened today, Shaun bursts into tears.

With an uneasy laugh, Nate tries to rock Shaun back and forth. "He-ey easy there. It's alright. Daddy's got you. I'm not that scary, am I?"

Kaelyn leans sideways to stroke Shaun's head. "It's okay, little one. I'm right here. Daddy's going to hold you for a bit." She shoots Nate an apologetic look. "He's like that with people he doesn't know."

Brenner reclaims her attention, but not before she glimpses Nate's stricken expression.

At Brenner's direction, she unzips her vault suit enough for Brenner to listen to her heart and breathing.

Nate is occupied by a crying Shaun, desperation mounting in his voice when nothing he does settles the baby. "Shh, shh, it's okay!"

Shaun's screaming only gets louder with each passing second. Kaelyn squirms on the step, looking sideways, aching to pull him back into her arms and offer him comfort. Her baby is right there, crying for her. The moment Brenner relents in her examination, Kaelyn leans over him at once, letting him see her face as she strokes his cheek. But nothing can ease his distress now, his cries haunting the shadowed spaces of the ceiling with glass-sharp echoes.

Brenner touches Kaelyn's chin. "Look this way for me."

She turns her head away from Shaun and hisses at the too-bright light Brenner shines in her eye, flinching away from her gentle grip.

"Mild photophobia," Brenner mutters to herself, and subjects Kaelyn to another round of blindness in her other eye before putting the wretched penlight away. Nate rubs circles on the back of her neck with his thumb, only to pull away in dire need of a second hand to hold Shaun through a fresh bout of tears.

While Brenner works, she asks questions Kaelyn can answer without much thought. Yes, she can feel her toes. No, she doesn't feel any chest pain. Yes, she's feeling woozy. No, she doesn't think she's liable to faint.

At last, Brenner leans back and gestures towards Shaun.

Breaths shaky, Kaelyn reaches out to her baby, crooning, "It's alright now. I know it's been a long day and it's strange down here." Nate concedes their son to her with a mixture of relief and regret as Shaun settles against her and cries. Tucking his head under her chin, she holds him close to impart some of her warmth to him, shivering as his tiny, cold fingers scrape her neck. "Is there some place warmer down here?"

"Yeah, we can get out of here if Dylan gives the all-clear. What's your opinion?"

"Well, neurological functions seem to be normal," Brenner says. "Memory, speech, higher order cognitive processes. You worked out right away that the situation wasn't right. Both are showing signs of stress, but it's unclear whether it's from the stasis or the current situation. Get some rest, drink lots of fluids, and drop by the clinic tomorrow for a follow up. If anything about Shaun seems abnormal, or if you have chest pains or difficulty breathing, find me at once. But for now, you're free to go."

"Thanks, Dylan." Kaelyn reaches out to squeeze her wrist.

Brenner pauses her packing, the tiniest of smiles tugging at the edges of her mouth as if pulled by fine threads. "I should be thanking you for not making a medical emergency. The clinic is empty if you want some privacy." She gives the still-bawling Shaun a wayward look. "I doubt the others will appreciate the alarm clock."

Settling Shaun more comfortably against her shoulder, Kaelyn follows Brenner to the infirmary, and her rocking gait soothes Shaun somewhat, but since his head rests directly beneath her ear, the difference is negligible. Nate trails sheepishly beside her, anxiety and guilt carved into the lines on his face. After stowing her equipment, Brenner takes her leave with a quiet goodnight. When the door slides shut, Kaelyn lets out a soft breath and looks around the dim room without really taking it in. It's all—too much.

And Nate. He's right beside her, worn and weary, but _here_. His presence buoys her, keeps her anchored if only to watch him in awe. He's here. He's really here.

Shaun lets out a particularly loud cry, cutting through the frigid atmosphere, jolting her attention back to him.

Nate hovers by her side with a pinched expression. "Is there anything I can do to help?"

"He'll settle down when he's ready. All we can do is wait."

Kaelyn circuits the room while Nate fetches blankets. Shaun's wails taper off to tired whimpers as she pats his back, and he quietens at last. Checking his diaper, she finds it dry and does the math. It's been—

Eight months.

It still doesn't register, her mind skipping over time that never existed to land not twenty minutes ago where Codsworth changed Shaun. Anyway, the point is he doesn't need a fresh diaper. Even though he's stopped crying, he remains unsettled in an unfamiliar room when he should be in the back yard, playing on the lawn while she reads in one of the deck chairs.

Kaelyn hops back on the gurney Nate turned into a blanket nest, a feat that would be tricky with her arms occupied by Shaun if not for Nate's gentle hands on her elbows. She unzips the front of her vault suit and offers Shaun a breast to suck, and it takes a few minutes before he's ready to accept. What remains of her energy dissipates and she leans her forehead against Nate's side.

He tangles his fingers in her hair, running circles against her scalp, and sighs. "So food is the secret trick to settling Shaun down? I'll keep that in mind. Do you want your shoes off?"

Her nod mashes her nose against his jacket. Nate crouches in front of her to unlace her boots, running his fingers up and down her calves. Sighing, Kaelyn closes her eyes and rests one foot on his knee, drawing patterns with a toe.

"You look as tired as I feel. Get up here and help me warm Shaun up."

His weary chuckle is comforting in its familiarity. Underneath the sandpaper-roughness is the husky baritone that never fails to send a bolt of warmth through her belly. "Yes, ma'am." Shucking off his own boots, Nate rounds the gurney to hop up behind her and ease her back against his chest. He folds his arms around her waist, supporting Shaun's weight.

Breaking Shaun's suction on her nipple with a finger, Kaelyn zips up her jumpsuit. This time she's certain Nate peeks. They squirm on the narrow gurney to find a comfortable arrangement, and end up pressed chest-to-chest, tangling their legs together, with Shaun between them. Kaelyn drags her feet, cold under her socks, down his shins.

"I love you," she sighs.

He kisses the tip of her nose, her cheek, and finally, softly, her lips. "I love you both."

Closing her eyes, Kaelyn rests her cheek against his chest. "Will you still be here tomorrow?"

Nate pulls her closer and drops a kiss to her shoulder. His other hand rests on Shaun's back. "Promise."

* * *

A large hand rests on her waist, imparting heat through through her clothes. Warm breaths skim along the shell of her ear. Kaelyn opens her eyes to the most beautiful sight in the world: her husband asleep in front of her, curled on his side for once. The lights are dim enough that the remnants of tension in her temples don't flare up. With a stretch that almost lands her on the floor, she recalls they aren't in their bed at all but huddled on a little gurney in Vault 111's clinic.

Shaun is nestled between his parents. He hasn't woken up yet, so either his internal clock is as confused as hers or it's not yet 5am. But even the clinic's minimal lighting is enough for her to study Nate's face. His cheeks are gaunter than she remembers, and there are purple thumbprints pressed under this eyes.

Nate sighs again and his fingers twitch against her ribs. Under his unbuttoned jacket, there's a once-white shirt that molds itself to his torso. Her fingertips skate along his bicep, following the dip and curve of his corded muscles. She runs her fingers through his auburn hair, tugging at the too-long ends that flop over his temple. He normally keeps it short, as per army regs.

Nate shifts in his sleep with a soft exhale; this in turn nudges Shaun, who digs a tiny foot into Kaelyn's stomach. She moves their baby to a more comfortable position, stroking a finger along the curve of his cheek.

When she looks up again, Nate's eyes are open. She'd forgotten just how green his eyes are.

"Hi." His voice is rough with sleep.

"Morning." Kaelyn snuggles as close as she can without smothering the baby.

"And you…" Nate moves to touch Shaun. Hesitates. "He looks so peaceful like that."

Kaelyn presses kisses against his cheek, the tip of his nose, the corner of his mouth. Finally touches her lips to his, dragging her thumb along his jaw, and it's another homecoming. An affirmation this is still real. She pulls back and giggles when she sees the lipstick marks she left. Licking a thumb, she scrubs at the plum-colored smears on his skin.

Nate makes an amused noise, his hand closing around her slender wrist. "If you're going to slobber all over my face, I can think of more entertaining ways of doing so."

She hums, affecting nonchalance. "I'll bet you can."

Nate leans over to place a kiss under her jaw. His voice drops to a conspiratorial whisper, still husky from sleep. "I think you'd enjoy it, too."

"I hope you're willing to put your money where your mouth is, big guy."

Kaelyn can feel his smile against her skin. "Just you wait, honey. It's been—" he takes a moment to calculate. "Damn. About a year since I last saw you."

The mood shifts, not quite punctured but _pressed_ by looming reality. Kaelyn tangles her fingers in his hair, holds back a sigh. "I missed you, you know."

Nate draws back and they lie together, noses almost touching. Cupping her cheek, he says, quietly, "I thought you and Shaun were dead. Never been happier to be proven wrong in my life."

Memories of yesterday rush her, alternating hot and cold. The cloud of fire. The sanctuary of ice. Reaching up, she curls her fingers around Nate's wrist and squeezes, as much for her own comfort as his. "I'm just glad you and Shaun are safe."

Sensing her distress, Nate rests his forehead against hers. It's a form of comfort usually reserved for brothers in arms. "How are you feeling? Is the headache any better?"

She nods, troubled only by the faintest twinge in her temples that could be from dehydration as much as a lingering side effect of being— being frozen. For eight months. Huffing out an unsteady breath, she murmurs, "I can hardly wrap my head around any of it."

"It'll take time, honey. This is all—beyond what any of us expected. Take it easy, okay?"

"Right now I'm cuddling in bed with my family. I am taking it easy."

He gives her a slanted look that says _nice try_. "I know you, and I know you feel the need to be on top of everything. Don't beat yourself up for something that's beyond your control, is all I'm saying."

While Kaelyn is weighing up a response, Shaun squirms against her side and gurgles. Rolling onto her back, she pulls him onto her belly and leans him back against her propped-up thighs. He blinks sleepily as she coos, "Good morning, little one."

Shaun's mouth works as he sticks his tongue between his lips, then he blows a raspberry and giggles.

"Is he, ah…" Nate strokes one tentative finger over the back of Shaun's hand, ready to pull away at a moment's notice. When no crying is forthcoming, Nate's shoulders relax. "Is he going to get upset if I hold him?"

Kaelyn hums thoughtfully. "I'll change his diaper and give him a feed, then see how he feels." Easing to her feet, she carries Shaun to a nearby table and makes do with a tea towel as a replacement diaper, before she returns to their blanket nest, pushing Nate back onto the gurney when he makes to get up. She settles against his side and feeds a hungry and eager Shaun.

After burping Shaun—Kaelyn decides she isn't mean enough to make Nate deal with it—she looks between them. "So how are you feeling, little guy? Are you going to let Daddy hold you today?"

Shaun coos up at her and his big eyes turn to Nate when he leans in, hands hovering in the air, uncertain. But Shaun blinks and smiles, and Kaelyn can practically feel Nate radiate relief. Shaun's transition from one parent to the other involves too many hands, but then he's staring up at his father while Nate watches back, equal parts anxious and awed.

"Good morning, kiddo." Nate holds Shaun with both hands, his little body molding to the curve of his shoulder. He strokes a finger down the arm Shaun managed to work free from his swaddling and the baby grabs at the cuff of his fatigues. Nate's expression is—very soft.

Shaun huffs and Nate tenses up. "You're sure he's okay?"

Kaelyn gives him an amused smile. "A secret for you: babies are little people. They cry because they don't like something, and a lot of adults do things they don't like. If you wouldn't give a stranger a sloppy kiss and nibble on their toes, don't do it to a baby."

"What? You're telling me people don't like toe-nibbling? Why didn't someone tell me this sooner?"

"I married a barbarian."

Nate grins and slings an arm around her shoulders. "Congratulations, you're stuck with me for life."

Shaun squeals and they both look down to find him giving them a wide toothless smile that becomes a giggle when Kaelyn tickles his belly.

Balancing Shaun in the crook of his elbow, Nate shows her to the mess hall. No one is surprised by Kaelyn's appearance; conversely, she is surprised only Miller and Sculley sit at the table with Brenner, dealing cards. A glance into the dorm behind them proves it's empty. Strange.

Miller gives her a rare full smile. "Glad to see you and Shaun are alright."

Unfortunately, Sculley has to open his mouth. "Mornin', Mrs P. Lookin' good for someone who was a popsicle yesterday. I don't suppose you've got any superpowers now? Ability to to freeze things with your mind? Sense ice cream in a ten mile radius?"

Kaelyn has a retort ready on her tongue, but then Sculley looks turns in his seat to look her full on with bloodshot eyes. His cheeks are gaunt, deep shadows bringing red fever spots into sharp relief, and his hair has fallen out in uneven clumps.

"Don't be an ass, Sculley." Brenner's voice is the calm of someone pushed so far she doesn't even care anymore.

"How could you deprive the world of my best feature?"

"The world will surely find some way to cope with the loss," Kaelyn says dryly.

Sculley opens his mouth to retort, only for Shaun's squeal to startle him. Nate takes the opportunity to usher Kaelyn into a chair and hands Shaun back to her while he inspects the remnants of breakfast in the skillet. From the narrow-eyed look Sculley shoots him, it's probable her husband made some kind of gesture at him behind her turned back. At least Brenner and Miller welcome her to the table.

Kaelyn holds up a spoon. "Is this clean? Here you go." She holds it out to Shaun. While he's distracted mouthing his new toy, she inspects the plate Nate sets in front of her.

Picking at cooling slices of fried Cram, Kaelyn realizes just how much she has gotten used to their comfortable suburban life. Complacent, even. Between their double income and Nate's veteran status, they'd fared well during the food shortages. Beside her, he eats with enough vigor for two appetites, shoveling his breakfast into his mouth without hesitation or fanfare. When it's gone his knife scrapes mournfully across the greasy ceramic. From this angle, his face seems thinner, and the way he looks down at his plate makes her wonder about those mythical eight months.

She slides her last piece of Cram onto his plate. Nate starts to object, but she shakes her head. "I'm not that hungry."

Instead of assuaging him, his eyebrows knit together. "Are you alright?"

"Let her work up her appetite at her own pace," Brenner says without looking up from her cards. "As long as someone eats it, the food isn't going to waste."

He subsides but shoots her several furtive looks while he eats, just in case she changes her mind. After Shaun bangs a fist on the tabletop, flipping Kaelyn's cutlery into her lap and earning a round of applause from Miller, they decide to relocate. Nate takes her hand and shows her to the dorm, of which its most prominent feature is the number of empty beds.

The unease from yesterday lurks in the pit of her stomach, burrowing in its labyrinthine den. Nate's dog tags hang out of his shirt, and Kaelyn twines the chain between her fingers. "You don't have anywhere you need to be?"

"Only with you."

Oh, he's still got it.

After blanketing a corner of the dorm to create a play space, Kaelyn sits with her back against the wall, stretching her legs to create a crude boundary. Nate lowers himself beside Shaun to play, and soon their baby's delighted giggles echo through the room. Content to watch father and son bond, she hangs back and offers the occasional tip. Lethargy lines her bones with lead, fills her mind with fluff; it feels downright lazy to be on the verge of dozing off after just waking up, but it's all she can do to stay alert.

Shaun reaches for Nate and his expression cracks. That jogs Kaelyn's memory. "Oh—there's something we have to show you." She holds out her hands to Shaun. When his tiny hands are safely encased in hers, she gently pulls him upright.

Shaun wobbles on his feet, looking between his parents with a wide, cheeky smile.

Nate gasps and applauds. "That's my boy! You can stand up!"

"There's just one problem. He doesn't know how to sit down."

They spend the day like this, refusing to even mention anything outside their familial bubble, and Kaelyn is pulled in two directions as if she's the ball of yarn caught in a tug-of-war between two cats. She's at once relieved beyond measure and yet sick with guilt that she gets this time when who knows how many people are dead. Or worse.

The spaces of her heart are painted crimson and burnished with nuclear fire.

The scale of death still hasn't sunk in. Not really.

At last Nate shuffles to where she sits and kisses her cheek, tired but somehow reinvigorated. Shaun crawls after him and Nate tips over in a controlled fall to put them on eye level.

Kaelyn draws a knee up to her chest. "Nate?"

"Mmm?"

"Is there anyone else here?"

Gaze darkening, he toys with the buttons on his fatigues. "Just what's left of my squad—you've seen them all."

While she may not be privy to the logic of the armed forces, this assignment of Nate's seems too good to be true. The military should have no interest in Vault 111. "Why would the army send you here?"

"They, ah, didn't."

Kaelyn blinks. Then she plants one forearm beside his head to hover over him. "Nathaniel Stewart Prescott, are you telling me you _deserted_ from the army?"

A myriad of emotions flicker across his face, too fast to catch, like tiny silver fish darting away from the circling shadow of a bird. But while guilt lingers in the tension around his mouth, his eyes are so very soft. "This is where I needed to be."

Cupping his jaw, Kaelyn leans down to kiss him, hard. The enormity of Nate's decision bears down on her with a near-tangible weight. As an army wife, she'd thought she'd made her peace with the fact she would always share her husband with the military. But now he's free of army trappings, and for the first time since they've met he's committed entirely to their family.

She pulls back, panting. "I love you."

He raises his head to press their foreheads together, tangling his fingers in her hair. "I love you, too."

After a quiet yet cheery dinner, Kaelyn returns to the infirmary as per Brenner's advice. Nate hangs back to play cards with Miller, but their air is too somber, their voices too low and furtive, for a friendly game. The clinic door hisses open and both Brenner and Sculley glance up. Apologies ready on her tongue, Kaelyn's about to back out of the room when Brenner gestures for her to stay.

Sculley leans against the doctor's desk while Brenner fiddles with a Geiger counter, and he gives Kaelyn a narrow-eyed look. She returns it steadily, refusing to be intimidated no matter his alarming personal state. He drops his gaze first. Scuffs a boot on the ground. "We done, Bren?"

"Only if you never call me Bren again. I have a needle with your name on it if you do."

Between the twin threats of a baby and a needle, Sculley makes a hasty escape, rolling down his sleeves as he goes. His fatigues hang loose off his frame these days. When the door hisses shut behind him, Kaelyn asks, "Is Sculley going to be alright?"

Brenner sighs and her shoulders slump. "I don't know."

"What's wrong with him?"

"Radiation exposure. His rad levels keep increasing, but he hasn't keeled over yet. I don't know how much longer he has left. Maybe he's a mutant—wouldn't put it past him, the bastard. Don't get me wrong, he's sick, but he should be dead by now and he's not."

"And he left army care to follow Nate?"

Brenner's hands tighten convulsively on her clipboard. "You don't—" She sets her jaw and tries again. "That isn't what they would have done. They'd have studied the effects of extreme radiation exposure."

"Ah."

Brenner gestures to the gurney and Kaelyn hops up. Again, she insists Brenner see to Shaun first. Tonight he is playful, taking her attempts to press the stethoscope to his chest as a new game when he isn't climbing over his mother the jungle gym. Her vault suit—and it is starting to get uncomfortable, not to mention sweaty—offers few handholds for an inquisitive baby to pull himself up, but that doesn't stop him from trying. Between Kaelyn's amusement and Brenner's good-natured exasperation, the latter finally concludes her medical exam.

"If you haven't noticed anything about him that's unusual, I'd say he's fine."

Relief washes through her at Brenner's pronouncement. If the stasis had harmed Shaun at all…

Since the door is shut, Kaelyn lowers Shaun to the floor with a toy to occupy him while Brenner checks her over. In addition to all yesterday's tests, Brenner also has her complete a number of small exercises, like touching her thumbs to each of her fingers, to prove she's retained her fine motor skills.

Satisfied at last, Brenner steps back and compares her notes. "Aside from lingering exhaustion and low appetite, I can't find anything wrong with you. If anything feels off or you don't feel back to normal in a week, come talk to me." She looks over Kaelyn a final time, her gaze lingering on the biometrics scanner over her heart. "Looks like Vault-Tec's experiment is a success."

Maybe it's meant as a reassurance, but Kaelyn feels a chill.


	4. Chapter 4

Alas, Nate's little bubble of paradise can't last. Miller has spent every free moment over the last few days planning. On the map spread over a table, she's highlighted several possible routes to Quincy. Her new pip-boy weighs down her wrist as she runs a finger along the shortest avenue. She's also pilfered the Cryolater from the Overseer's office, eager to field test it.

Not only that, but the pressing need for food looms heavier than ever with two more mouths, and more still frozen. Discussing it over breakfast makes everyone even more nervous.

Nate shifts in his seat, circling one hand around Shaun when the baby overbalances in his lap. "When you leave, I'll go up with you to comb over Sanctuary Hills for supplies."

Miller nods. "Don't take too long to gear up. I need to get moving."

Kaelyn adds, "Good idea. We need to look for Codsworth, and I wouldn't mind some proper clothes."

Nate must respectfully disagree on that last count, since that vault suit does some wonderful things for her figure. But then the first half of her answer clicks. "Hon, I don't think that's a good idea. It's not looking good up there."

She arches an eyebrow. "We'd only go as far as our house. Do you really think a trip that short will be dangerous?"

He looks from Kaelyn to Shaun, whose little hands are clenching and unclenching in Nate's scarf. "Still not a risk I want to take. Not with either of you."

Dissatisfied, Kaelyn turns to Brenner. "You said I'm in perfect health. Is there any reason why I shouldn't go?"

"My medical opinion is you shouldn't, actually. Radiation levels on the surface are lower than they were six months ago, but that doesn't mean it's safe out there. I also can't recommend taking Shaun to the surface, and he needs a guardian at all times."

The squad pass around the bottle of rad-x pills, keeping it out of Shaun's inquisitive reach. When he's on the cusp of tears, Kaelyn distracts him with another spoon. The pill bottle is immediately forgotten as he gnaws on the cutlery. Nate makes a mental note of that.

After breakfast, Kaelyn follows him out of the mess, and he braces against the coming storm. Out of hearing range so this doesn't become a show, he turns to face her. Nate knows all too well the kind of gossips his squad is comprised of.

"Alright, lay it on me."

"It's clear we need supplies, and as the one most familiar with the neighborhood it makes sense for you to go." There it is, in the tension around her eyes and the tight bow of her mouth. She's less than impressed, to put it mildly.

Sometimes coaxing her into admitting it can be a pain in the ass. He's always subscribed to the school of straightforwardness, himself. "Whatever you're thinking, just say it. I don't— don't want to leave things unresolved between us." If pressed, he can argue the distraction factor, that this might jeopardize his focus in the field. But Kaelyn hears the unspoken _just in case_.

Her voice is high and tight. "Really? Just like that, you're back and gone again? And I can't even walk a few hundred feet to my own house?"

"Look, I understand why you're not happy about this." And he means it: if their roles were reversed, he sure wouldn't appreciate being cooped up in the vault while his better half takes all the risks. "I'll poke around with the Geiger counter, and when background radiation levels are low enough, you can go up if you really want to." A part of him protests this concession, wanting to protect her from the hell up there. But sometimes there isn't much difference between a safety blanket and a straitjacket.

Kaelyn nods, slowly, wavy hair bouncing along her collar. When she next speaks, her voice is quiet. Subdued. "How… bad is it up there? Did anyone make it?"

She doesn't need to know about the bodies by the gates. "We've seen a few survivors on the surface, but things are pretty dire up there."

Kaelyn nods again. Hardly an unexpected answer.

Nate strokes a thumb across her cheek. "I know it's hard, and I know it's so soon, but we need food, yesterday. This time I won't be going far. Just checking out the neighborhood."

"I just— I wish you didn't have to leave again."

"I know. But it won't be for long this time. Promise."

"I wish things were—" she halts, a self-deprecating smile crossing her face. "Listen to me. The world just burned in a nuclear war, and here I am complaining."

"I understand why you're unhappy. I really do. But as long as you and Shaun stay down here, you're safe."

She closes the gap between them, her hand resting over his heart. "I just wish you could be safe, too."

He covers her hand with his own, his chest so full and tight he can't speak. She doesn't seem to be expecting a response, though, so he bows his head and enjoys the warmth of her touch burning through his shirt.

That's as good as it's going to get between them. "Anything you want me to pick up from home?"

Her voice is soft. "Find out what happened to Codsworth."

Even if they bought Codsworth only a week before Nate shipped out, even if his only glimpses of the robot have been through Kaelyn's missives, a lump forms in his throat. Codsworth had been there for Kaelyn and Shaun when he wasn't. Weird feeling to owe a robot, but there it is. "Will do. Anything else?"

She catches her lower lip between her teeth as she thinks. "Shaun needs clothes. And toys. Bring back whatever's left in the nursery."

Her selflessness would be inspiring if not for the fact Nate wants to do this for _her_. Resting his hands on her shoulders, he asks, "And what about you? Personally?"

"My clothes. My Nuka-World mug—and coffee. All the coffee you can find. If my toothbrush isn't glowing green, grab it. And my hairbrush too."

Leaving her with promises to find everything she asked for, Nate detours to the dorm. "Hey, Dylan. You mind sitting this one out?"

With her personal arsenal already spread on the bed like an unnervingly lethal slumber party, maybe he should have brought it up earlier. The woman herself, perched on the corner of the mattress, doesn't look up from the first aid kit she's packing. "You want me to stay back to keep your wife from doing anything stupid."

"Kaelyn doesn't do stupid things. She acts with logic and forethought, and I understand why she's less than happy."

"Doesn't change the fact you want me to keep an eye on her."

"Not just because of that but… yeah. I don't want to leave her and Shaun down here alone."

Brenner agrees with a shrug and hands him the first aid kit. He returns to his neglected pack to gear up. The familiar ritual of checking his weapons, buckling up his combat armor, preps more than his body, his brain shifting gears into a combat-ready state. He's the last one out of the dorm, and jogs down the corridors to find Miller. They agreed she'd take their scavenged water purifier. But that isn't all.

Nate now hands over a bag he's stuffed with as many rations he could fit in. "Take it. You can move faster if you don't have to forage for food."

Miller's gaze drops to the backpack, temptation scrawled over her face. "You know how important that is."

Nate swings it back and forth like a pendulum. "Consider it a thank you. You never had to help me get into the vault; you could have split for Quincy the moment we saw Boston."

That convinces her, and she hefts the bag over her shoulder. "Appreciate it. Vault 111 is probably safer than anything out there. If we can manage it, Sculley and I will bring my family back here."

Nate claps her on the shoulder. "You guys are always welcome, Gina."

She nods, but her eyes grow distant. "If we can manage it."

"If… if you can't find your family," he ventures, "you're still welcome to come back."

She nods again, with far less cheer.

The last one to hunt down is Sculley, who paces near the exit zone. "Heard you're going with."

"I ain't stayin' here dyin' soft," Sculley snaps. "If I can keep Miller alive long enough to find her family, then it'll be worth it." He rarely mentioned any family, but Nate always had the impression that wherever he came from, it hadn't been anywhere good. At least he has no one to worry about out there.

Goodbyes exchanged, the residents of Vault 111 gather in the exit zone. All six of them.

Kaelyn eyes Nate's weapons but says nothing. First his laser rifle, conspicuous block of technology it is, but her gaze gets stuck on his combat knife and he isn't entirely sure what that means. Shaun is balanced on her hip, a pink-gummed smile lighting his face.

It's a kick in the heart—the good kind. He and Shaun will become friends even if it kills him. Nate smiles back and lets Shaun grab his finger. "Won't be gone long, kiddo. Behave for Mommy, alright?"

Shaun squeals, which Nate takes as a 'not likely but possible'. Then and only then does he dare to look at Kaelyn, who watches them with a faint smile playing across her lovely features. Thus softened, she meets his gaze willingly enough, even if that unhappy glint remains buried in her dark eyes. Maybe she can fool prosecutors and police, but not him.

"Be careful out there." Doesn't matter how soft her voice is, Sergeant Prescott knows an order when he hears one.

"Bye, honey. I love you." He takes a moment to gauge frustration level, then goes for a kiss. For a half-second he wonders if she'll turn her face away, but her fingers clamp on either side of his face, curling around his jaw and yanking him closer for a proper open-mouthed kiss.

The urgent requirement of oxygen and Shaun's roving hands forces them to part, their flighty breaths mingling in the space between them. He bumps her forehead with his. "I'll be back before you know it."

Before he can pull away, she grips his chin. Digs her nails in for the briefest moment. "You better, big guy."

They part to a respectable distance, Kaelyn reclaiming Shaun from Brenner and Nate wandering over to the power armor as if they didn't just majorly breach propriety in public.

Sculley waggles his eyebrows—or what's left of them. It's hard to tell from the hemorrhaging in his eyes, but it looks like he's directing the gesture over Nate's shoulder. "Aren'tcha gonna say goodbye to me?"

Arching a disdainful eyebrow, Kaelyn holds out a hand. "Goodbye, Sculley."

Eyes narrowed, Sculley searches for any hint of a trap before grabbing her hand. Their shake is rough enough to make Nate wince internally, but some inexplicable moment passes between them, and when they step back there isn't a scowl to be had between them. Nate can hardly believe it—and wishes he had a camera for posterity.

A final round of goodbyes pass between them. If they just continue making jokes about meeting up for a beer and a radioactive roast afterward, maybe it'll happen. Kaelyn gently waves Shaun's hand in a goodbye that's both bittersweet and absurdly adorable. Miller waves back, and someone in power armor waving an over-sized hand at a baby takes the cake for the weirdest yet heartening thing he's ever seen. The elevator pulls away with a groan and Nate watches his family through the grille until they've vanished from sight.

Sculley flexes his hand. "She didn't even flinch."

Ah. Nate bumps his side with an elbow. "Why should she? She knows you."

Curling his hands into fists, he shoves them into his pockets. "I have looked in a mirror, you know."

To go for the sympathetic response or the tease? "'Bout as ugly as normal, buddy."

Sculley snorts. "Keep your flirtin' for your wife."

"Two things, my man: one, I'm married, as you just pointed out. Two, I prefer gents with class."

As it turns out, the elevator's waiting time isn't just a form of torture Nate's anxious brain inflicted on him last time. He and Sculley sit cross-legged on the platform and play a round of cards. Nate almost has him beat when the air changes from damp and stale to dusty and fresh; a wayward gust of air then messes up the cards. That doesn't stop Sculley from crowing about his assured victory as he chases the scattered deck like they're ration cards. Miller waits in silence, but from the way the power armor squeaks, she's probably shifting her weight from foot to foot, the motion too slight to show but enough to engage the internal motion sensors.

Impatience drives her to traverse half the construction yard before Nate and Sculley even make it to their feet. Understanding that urge, Nate jogs to catch up, reaching her at the sidewalk. To the left, his vacant home. Straight ahead, the road his comrades must take.

No more delaying. With the element of surprise, Nate manages to hook an arm around Sculley's neck and reel him in. "Take care."

Sculley returns the rough embrace. "See you on the other side, buddy."

No point offering a hand to Miller let alone a hug, so he makes do with smacking her armored elbow. "Say hi to Kenzie and your kids for me."

"Thanks, Prescott. Hope you and your family stay safe here."

Nate steps out of the way as she runs a last-minute systems check and Sculley hefts his pack more comfortably over his shoulders. They march down the street and cross the bridge—and it's wrong to see power armor here. Even more wrong that its wear and tear matches the ruined neighborhood. He watches until they're out of sight and even the reverberating clang of the power armor's mechanized footsteps has receded to the sigh of the dry breeze rattling down the street.

With a sigh of his own, Nate says his final goodbye to half his remaining squad and turns to his next objective.

Sanctuary Hills has fared better than other areas, but that doesn't make it any easier to see. Maybe there's something to be said for lead paint after all—

Pain spikes the back of his head and Nate jerks around. The rock that hit him clatters on the asphalt.

The only motion in the street is from the breeze that rustles the patchy grass.

A hiss echoes from inside his own house. Light reflects off chrome and— "By I live and breathe! Sir? Is that really you?"

The robot floats towards the front door, the orange blast of his jet propulsion highlighting the dents in his shell. All three eye stalks point in Nate's direction, artificial irises blown wide in a mimicry of shock.

Nate lowers his rifle at once. With a now-free hand he can rub the bump on the back of his skull. "Codsworth? You made it!"

"I could say the same to you, Mister Nate!" A final propulsion burst and Codsworth hovers in the rectangle of light on the threshold. "We were expecting you to be home months ago, sir. I'm afraid if you're looking for mum and young Shaun, they've already entered Vault 111 to escape the dreadful radiation. When mum signed the registration forms, she was adamant you be given a place as well. They should let you right in."

 _Way ahead of you on that one, buddy._ "I've already been into—"

There's a crash in the house behind him. Instinct sends him whirling again, rifle raised, alert for incoming threats. Ms Rosa's house is bright and vacant and menacing.

The first sign of life is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment. The curtains flutter, but there's no breeze.

Heart in his throat, torn in two directions, Nate waits with his rifle trained on the house. There's a growl from inside, a clatter, and the door creaks—

"Not to worry, sir!" Codsworth chimes. "It's just the neighbors!"

"Mr Prescott? Is that you?" Ms Rosa steps out of the carport, her brown hair loosened from its usual chignon.

Lowering his rifle for a second time, pulse jumping in his throat, Nate switches the safety on for good measure. No one can afford a trigger-happy accident. "Sure is!" he calls back. Once he manages to stop staring, that is.

She glances back to the house and yells, "I _told_ you!"

Turns out Nate isn't finished gaping as another four of his neighbors trudge out of the house, dirtied and anxious. Ms Rosa stands behind her son Luis, snaring his shoulder in her white-knuckled grip. Mrs and Mrs Fisher are more or less glued to each other, squeezing each others' hands. Jack Hawthorne, his dark hair in styled disarray, folds his skinny arms across his chest.

It's impressive that after a war that almost knocked humanity off the face of the earth, people can keep on surviving.

Ms Rosa looks down at her son. "What do you say to Mr Prescott?"

Luis scuffs his bare feet on the asphalt, his expression mutinous. "Sorry for throwing a rock at you."

Figures it had been the local nightmare kid. Less than fond of Luis' antics on the best of days, Nate barks, "Don't ever startle a soldier like that. I could have shot you!"

That proclamation earns him several gasps of horror from his neighbors. The Fishers huddle closer together, their arms encircling each others' waists.

Ah. Yes. Well. That pronouncement, naturally, isn't going to go over well with civilians.

Realizing he's in army mode, Nate relaxes his guard, deliberately slouching to put his neighbors at ease.

"Mr Prescott?" Jacinta Fisher takes a half-step closer, the whites of her eyes stark against her brown complexion. "It was you the whole time? You're the one who went up to the vault?"

"Sure was." Looking over these people with their ashen faces, fear and hunger wreaking havoc on them, he wishes he had explored the street. "I'm sorry I didn't find you guys earlier."

"How did you get into the vault? We tried, but the elevator never budged."

"One of my squad is an engineer; she hotwired the controls." With a working pip-boy now latched around his wrist, he can access the elevator as he pleases.

Luis peers up at him, his earlier grump evident in his voice when he asks, "Why'd you bother coming back up? It's gotta be much nicer down there."

"Once Vault 111 sealed, that was it. No one bothered to check if we were even still alive," Anna Fisher adds. Her mouth thins in a hard line, her blue eyes turning stormy.

Their jealousy is boggling. How could they want to be part of the experiment—oh. Right. "Vault 111 wasn't what anyone thought it would be," he answers grimly. "They used the residents as test subjects for cryogenic stasis."

That gets a reaction. Ms Rosa's eyebrows reach her hairline as her grip tightens convulsively on Luis' shoulder. The Fishers gasp, while Hawthorne is darkly amused. And Luis? The kid snickers.

"Are… are they alive?" Fingers pressed to her mouth, Jacinta's question is muffled. "Are Mrs Prescott and Shaun…?"

"Yeah, they're okay." Even if Jacinta looks relieved, there are too many faces in the group that remain unmoved by the momentous news. Understandable, even if Nate disagrees. "Most of our neighbors are still frozen. We need food. Badly. How have you managed to survive up here?"

"Mr Jahani has a root cellar," Anna says, her voice a mere wisp of her bubbly vibrancy Nate remembers. "There wasn't enough room for all of us. Not everyone made it in time before the bomb hit. Some of the others left not long ago."

Nate scans the array of faces but can't find Mr Jahani. Before he can remark on it, Anna continues unprompted, "When it rained, Mr Jahani went outside to collect the water and…" Her pinched white face tells the rest.

"It's alright," he says softly. "You don't have to say any more."

"Are Vault-Tec's staff still down there?" Ms Rosa asks. "For all its amenities, I'm not sure if I would be comfortable knowing what they've done. I almost signed us up."

Nate shakes his head. "They turned on each other. If there were any survivors, they've already cleared out. I'm going to recover what I can from home. If you want to come with, you should do the same. When everybody's ready, I'll take you down."

Despite Ms Rosa's misgivings, the prospect of hot showers wins them over. The surviving families peel away to their respective houses. With Codsworth by his side, Nate draws in a deep breath and pushes open the front door.

He'd never thought he'd live to see this. No, that isn't quite right. He'd _hoped_ he'd never see his home turn into a battlefield.

Glass crunches under his boot and Nate glances down. Raises his foot the moment it registers what he's stepping on. Crouching down, he turns the black picture frame over in his hands. Its frame is dusty and dented, and the certificate of Kaelyn's law degree is nestled inside behind the cracked glass. A little smudged and stained, but in one piece.

Codsworth bobs by his side. "Sir, after mum and young Master Shaun left for the vault, I collected a few things to keep them safe. It isn't much, I'm afraid." He holds a silver jewelry box in his pincers.

"Codsworth," Nate breathes, "I could kiss you."

"As much as I appreciate the sentiment, sir, I would prefer you didn't." But his circuits hum with pride.

The box itself, embossed with intricate swirling designs, is one of Kaelyn's family heirlooms, brought all the way from Sri Lanka when her grandparents moved to the States. And when he opens the latch, he finds a treasure trove of trinkets, besides their house keys. Nate's signed baseball and a newspaper clipping of Kaelyn's first big win in court. The birthday card Kaelyn and his mother arranged when he was in hospital in '72 after catching shrapnel in his hip. The bright colors of _Grognak_ issue one peek out from the bottom of the box, underneath Kaelyn's engagement ring.

There's also a stack of photos that includes their wedding pictures. As Kaelyn's husband he is contractually obligated to catch his breath when he sees her in her wedding sari. Nate flips through the stack. Their smiles, their clean faces—it feels like a lifetime ago.

Admittedly, a small part of him is pleased because this might save him from the doghouse. Nate puts Kaelyn's degree in the box for safekeeping and it has the pride of being the first recovered possession that goes in his pack.

He moves into the kitchen. The windows have all been smashed, but the floor is clear of glass. Someone cleaned out the fridge and the pantry hasn't fared much better. Snagging Kaelyn's mug from beside the coffee pot, Nate proceeds to scour every cupboard for every tin of soup that might've been overlooked.

"I do apologize, Mister Nate. The neighbors said they couldn't reach the rationing center and it seemed better than letting the perishables go to waste. You know how expensive milk is these days!"

Nate waves a hand. "No problem. Now pack all this up while I grab some clothes. Then find me a shovel."

"At once, sir!" If anything, Codsworth is pleased to be bossed around again.

At the end of the hall, the cupboard doors hang ajar. Must've been knocked by the blast, because Nate's emergency stash is safe under the towels. It includes first aid kit stuffed with everything he could scrounge, cans of purified water, tinned foods, a wad of now-useless cash. After clearing that out, Nate ventures into the nursery.

The mobile on Shaun's crib is crooked, the blue rockets dangling over a moldy mattress. Unsure which toys mean the most to Shaun—and frustrated that he doesn't know, that he wasn't here to know—Nate collects everything. His toy blocks, the car, even going so far to fish the teddy bear from under the crib.

In their own room, the dressers sit crooked, their family photos scattered across the floor under a minefield of glass shards. Nate rescues the photos with care. One is of Kaelyn's mom, may she rest in peace. His heart clenches when he sees his own parents. His brothers, in the rare moment that someone got all four Prescott boys sitting in front of a camera.

Even now, he's half tempted to search for them. If Kaelyn and Shaun made it, maybe they did too. But he can't leave now, not so soon. Maybe after everything's settled here. So he shoves the photos in his jacket pocket, along with his dissatisfaction and desire.

Instead, Nate clears out their wardrobe. Having more than one pair of pants is a gift he will never again take for granted. He then grabs as many of Kaelyn's clothes that will fit in their suitcase, including the pinstriped skirt. Victory. Nate eyes the bed, the blankets still neatly pressed—Codsworth's doing, no doubt—and his heart clenches. Every morning he woke up here next to his wife… it won't be something he'll ever do again.

Nate wanders to the backyard with that shovel. Between a dead yard and imperfect memory, he has to guess the spot. When his shovel hits something metal, he drops to his knees to pull out the box. Inside is a few thousand dollars in emergency cash, a few ration cards, and a 10mm pistol.

Kaelyn had made several fair arguments against having it: that she didn't want a lethal weapon anywhere near Shaun, that the neighborhood was safe, that someone could find it and cause a terrible mess. No names mentioned, but she'd been referring to Luis.

Still, he'd kept the 10mm.

Not something he's proud of, and that it wasn't _technically_ in the house isn't the kind of loophole that sits right with him. At the time, fresh off his tour, the thought of being without a gun made him sweat. Now? They need every weapon they can get their hands on.

Returning to the street, Nate waits with Codsworth, the latter chattering away about the weather, the milkman's lateness, the curious lack of mail for the past eight months.

"But at least there haven't been any bills, eh, sir?" Codsworth stretches one appendage as if going to clap Nate on the shoulder with the flat of a saw blade.

That's something Nate isn't going to miss. Along with taxes. "You got that right, buddy."

His neighbors assemble with bags and suitcases and all the food they've scavenged over the months, which will give them some breathing room. And Hawthorne, oddly enough, carries a cooler.

Nate raises an eyebrow. "Nuka-Cola stash?"

"My products," he answers. "Maybe I can't run my store anymore, but this stuff is still valuable."

Nate leads the way up the hill. Having to step past the bodies by the gate—and he's going to have to bury them too—doesn't earn the horror from his neighbors that he expects. In that moment, he realizes they are as much hard-eyed survivors as the civilians in Geneso.

Now that's an unsettling thought. The knife scar on Nate's ribs aches.

His neighbors grow more nervous as the elevator descends. The _Welcome Home_ sign that greets them feels a little less ironic this time. Quiet is not a word that applies to the elevator, so Kaelyn, Shaun and Brenner are drawn from the depths of Vault 111 to greet them. When Nate sees his family, his heart can march back to its proper spot in his chest and let him breathe in peace.

Brenner raises an eyebrow at the influx of new people. "When I said 'find food', this isn't what I had in mind."

Kaelyn eyes her sidewards. "It's too soon for cannibalism jokes, Dylan."

Shaun reaches for Nate and his son's desire is his command. Settling Shaun in the crook of his arm, Nate drops a kiss to his dark, silky hair and then tucks Kaelyn against his other side. Brushing his mouth against the shell of her ear, he murmurs, "See? I told you I wouldn't be gone long."

This only makes Kaelyn tighten her hold, her nails digging through his jacket. Not that he's complaining, mind.

"Mum!" A jet burst propels Codsworth closer, his artificial irises blown wide. "I am beyond relieved that you've been safe down here!"

Her face lightens. "Codsworth! You're alive!"

"Mrs Prescott!" Jacinta gasps, and Kaelyn steps past Nate to greet their neighbors.

Nate makes the formal introductions to Brenner, if that kind of thing even matters anymore, and shows them to the dormitory. "That bed is Dylan's, but otherwise take your pick."

The Fishers claim a single bed to share, of course, and Luis is of an age where he trots to the back corner thinking it'll make him a rebel. Ms Rosa sits heavily on the corner of the nearest bed, pressing a hand into the mattress; her eyes grow wet. Hawthorne, however, sprawls on his bunk, hooking one arm behind his head and the other around his cooler.

Nate cocks his head. Store, eh? "I'll bite. What on earth are your 'products'?"

"Chems."

Kaelyn arches a cool eyebrow. "Is that so?"

"Mentats, buffout, and even a little something special…" Hawthorne digs inside the cooler for a lunch box and pops the lid.

Nate sucks in a breath. "Where did you get _that?"_

He knows psycho. Boy, does he know psycho. Too many people he's served with have gotten hooked on that junk; from his own squad, Weiss had been an occasional user. Meddling from the officers had kept Nate from throwing the book at him, because apparently chem use was okay as long as the army got better soldiers out of it.

Hawthorne just looks smug. "I have my ways."

Kaelyn watches all this with that raised eyebrow. "This is clearly a concern for you, hon. Can you explain?"

Irritation grips Nate; he'd expected instant support. Then he realizes she isn't doing it because she doubts him, but for the benefit of their neighbors. "Psycho is made for soldiers. Increases aggression, dampens pain receptors, that sort of thing. I've seen what that junk does to people, and it ain't pretty."

"What's the fuss in here?" Brenner lounges in the doorway, hooking her thumbs through the loops on her belt.

"Hawthorne got his hands on psycho."

That kills her flippant attitude. "You little… Only way to get that is from the army."

The guy—just a kid, really, who probably wanted easy money—puffs himself up. "I pride myself on my professional contacts."

Nate hesitates, makes a snap decision. "Alright. Hand it over."

"Hey, man, you can't just take what you want," he flares. "These are my personal belongings!"

"Nice try. Psycho is dangerous, and I'm not letting you put everyone here at risk." Being twice the other man's size, Nate can confiscate the cooler with ease.

"Psh." He waves a hand. "You military types are all the same."

Nate's about to tell him that if he wants to leave, there's the door, but Kaelyn intercedes again. "Hawthorne, I understand that's what it looks like, but living in the vault won't be the same as living in the neighborhood. We have to consider how our actions will impact the whole community. In this instance, I trust the judgment of two people who have seen psycho's effects first hand."

Hawthorne isn't convinced, muttering something uncomplimentary under his breath, but the Fishers are thoughtful. Rather than risk further confrontation, Nate and Brenner beat a hasty retreat to the clinic. Brenner unpacks the assorted chems from the cooler to note them in the inventory, but even she pauses before opening the lunch box. Three syringes rest inside, swaddled in the remains of a shirt.

Nate's hands ball into fists. "Who was buying these? If anyone in our street was doing psycho…"

Nausea rushes him at the thought that Kaelyn and Shaun might have been in danger the whole damn time.

What he doesn't realize is that Kaelyn followed them in until she rests her hand in the crook of his elbow. "The army really created psycho?"

Brenner nods.

Another detail he'd never wanted her to know. Nate had almost been forced on the stuff himself. Brenner had pulled strings to put a notation in his file that he wasn't a viable subject for psycho use, but the close call had rattled him.

"I vote we destroy it."

"Not so fast." Brenner holds up a hand. "It could be useful. Not for what you're thinking, Nate. It might be possible to break it down into its components or synthesize something else from it. Point is, we can't afford to waste anything."

Nate's about to protest—she knows bloody well what psycho does to people—when Kaelyn rests her hand on his arm. "How about a compromise, then? Keep the chems locked away where no one can find them until we ever need them."

The combination of love and logic always trips him. Always. No one else has learned to harness both so effectively. Nate huffs a frustrated breath. "Fine. Just—keep it well-hidden. Pick a password no one will guess."

Brenner cocks an eyebrow. "I guess 1-2-3-4 is out."

"I'll smooth over any ruffled feathers." Kaelyn stretches on her toes to peck his cheek and leaves. Shaun peeps over her shoulder at him, and when he smiles, Nate's own mouth curves up in response. The door hisses shut, leaving him alone with Brenner—the last of his squad. Possibly the last of Fox Company, if they even have the right to the name anymore.

Brenner remarks, "Damn. She knows what she's doing."

—

As a peace offering, Kaelyn hunts down towels for each of the vault's new residents and points them to the showers. If that doesn't improve morale, Nate doesn't know what will.

Kaelyn watches them with that inscrutable expression she wears when she feels it isn't safe to express herself. Sometimes it means she's in the courtroom, but Nate wonders why she's wearing it now.

At least she doesn't keep him in suspense. "I don't know whether to feel guilty I got off lightly compared to them, or grateful."

He wraps an arm around her shoulders. "Never feel guilty for being alive. It all just boils down to luck."

Kaelyn is quiet for a long time, but her eyes are sad. "Why would Vault-Tec do this?"

"Wish I knew. Gotta wonder if the other vaults are running experiments as well…" Not the cheeriest of thoughts.

She closes her eyes.

He pulls her against his side. "What, you think you should have known when you signed us up?"

Her weights shifts just enough to tell him he's right.

"You did the right thing, okay? Even if I'd never made it here, you took action to keep yourself and Shaun safe. That's all I ever want for the two of you."

"Safe as guinea pigs for Vault-Tec's experiments?"

Nate runs one hand over her shoulder and along the curve of her spine, pressing gently at the point of tension in her back. "You never could have known what they intended."

"But what if you hadn't come along and freed us? The staff are dead. How long would we have been frozen? Until the systems failed and we all died—"

He grips her shoulders. "Take it easy, hon. Best not to linger on what-ifs. It didn't play out that way, so don't agonize over something that hasn't happened. It's energy you can't afford to waste."

She eyes him, and again with that damn poker face. "Is that your soldierly wisdom? Learned on the field of battle and all that?"

Thinking of Fox Company pricks him with guilt. "You bet."

Sensing his sudden unease, Kaelyn's face softens. She takes his hand, lacing their fingers together, and tugs him to the clinic where Codsworth has been babysitting Shaun. With a gentle shove, Kaelyn pushes him into the nearest chair. Nate sighs as he sinks into the padding.

"Long day?" She pulls up her own chair and scoops his foot into her lap to struggle with his laces. Army lacing is a little more complicated than standard knots.

"Yeah. Something of a roller coaster. Going home… wasn't like what I'd pictured when I was in the trenches. But I'm glad we found survivors." His toes curl when she peels off his sock, not wanting to expose her to the nastiness of sweaty feet, but she halts his squirming by pressing her thumb to the arch of his foot.

Nate holds back a groan.

Damn, that feels good. And she knows it, too, as she lowers her head to conceal a smile. "You like that?"

"Don't stop."

Kaelyn hums as she rubs circles on the ball of his foot. She finds the tension in his foot and works it into a pleasant ache. It's an old strategy they'd learned to cope after his long absences, since nothing can put a dampener on intimacy like his army service and associated traumas. But they're both physical people, and this kind of contact can work wonders when they're learning how to be comfortable in each other's presence again.

Since Nate can't have all the fun, he pats his thigh and Kaelyn lifts one slender foot into his lap. With some rearrangement to compensate for their size difference, they can comfortably sit and share a mutual foot rub. Nate's thumb digs into the sensitive ball of her foot and has the satisfaction of making her squeak.

Their silence is easy and warm, and Nate finds himself relaxing. The sounds of Shaun's soft breathing and Codsworth's puttering disguise the vault's naturally creepy ambiance.

It almost feels like home. Almost.


	5. Chapter 5

There are certain realities to acclimatize to when one's husband is a veteran. One niggling detail the recruitment posters neglect to mention is that they often carry the ghosts of their battles with them, whose whispers grow loudest in the dark.

In all honesty, this isn't even the first time Kaelyn has been startled awake by one of Nate's nightmares. Something solid connects with her hip and her eyes snap open as she teeters over the edge of the gurney. It takes her a moment to recognize the room; it's not their bedroom, but Vault 111. Nate's shifting in his sleep, blankets trapping his legs, and beside him Shaun wakes with a cry.

Sensing potential danger, Kaelyn scoops up the baby so he isn't smothered. With her free hand she touches Nate's shoulder—but lightly, in case he startles. Every partner of a veteran learns how to minimize their chances of catching an errant, panicked punch. "Hon. Honey, wake up."

He rolls over, and she shakes his arm again. "Wake up. It's just a—"

She springs back when he lurches upright, narrowly avoiding head butting her. Shaun makes a noise of complaint at the sudden movement, and Kaelyn tries to comfort both her son and her husband at the same time. With her free hand she strokes Shaun's cheek, while saying, "It's okay. It's okay. We're okay."

Under her soothing mantra, Nate's gaze settles on her. Recognition sparks. "Kaelyn?"

Before she can answer, he crushes her and Shaun into a hug. Burying his face in her neck, he wraps his arms around her waist as he shudders. Freeing one arm, she strokes his hair, down his back, along his ribs. "It's okay, hon. We're safe, all of us."

Nate only pulls back when Shaun wriggles with another cry. "Let me hold him."

Kaelyn hesitates a fraction of a second, assessing if it's safe for them both. Nate notices. She holds out Shaun without a word and, with all the gentleness in the world, Nate lifts their baby out of her arms. Tucking Shaun's head under his chin, he rocks back and forth, crooning under his breath. Under his lullaby, Shaun drifts back to sleep. At least one of them can.

Kaelyn helps Nate settle back on the bed, since both of his arms are occupied, and she curls up beside him. Nate's sigh heralds that all is, if not well, then at least calm.

She offers, as she always does, "Want to talk about it?"

He hesitates, as he always does. Expecting him to confide in her is an all but useless hope. So when his fingers tighten on her shoulder, signaling a decision made, resolve gathered, she can't contain her surprise.

"I thought you two were dead. For months. And I— I just followed orders. For months. At first we did what we could to maintain order, but it wasn't enough. Neighbors turned on each other for a bottle of water. Things became… bad." That pulls a laugh from him, like a rope hauling a muddy boulder from the depths of a bog. He closes his eyes, presses the heel of his hand into the bridge of his nose. "Understatement of the century. I didn't actually go AWOL to find you. I abandoned what's left of Fox Company because we were just another gang with guns, killing anything that got in our way." He swallows, the motion harsh, bitterness carving itself into his face.

Kaelyn ponders this. Fights a shudder of revulsion. She can't imagine Nate participating in that. She runs her fingers through his hair, lightly scratching circles over his scalp. "So the army served itself first?"

With downcast eyes, he nods.

"But if the army can't restore order, who can?"

"Nobody," is his glum response. Then he shakes himself out. "I mean, it's up to the rest of us to rebuild what we can."

The enormity of the situation creeps on Kaelyn, slowly, like the pre-dawn sky that lightens from navy blue to gunmetal gray, in the quiet space that transitions from one state to another.

No more law firm, or working cases, or driving in peak hour traffic. No more baseball games or walks along the beach. No more family lunches. No more shopping or toiletries or any of the creature comforts that mark twenty first century living.

To distract herself, she asks, "So what made you come home?"

"In one of your holotapes, you mentioned that you'd signed up for the Vault Program. I needed something to hang onto… something to believe in."

Shifting onto one elbow, Kaelyn kisses him. "Thank you for coming home. I thought I'd never see you again."

His smile softens the tension that lingers at the corners of his eyes. "You don't have to thank me for something like this."

Her sigh slithers, warm and humid, across his bare pectoral. Shaun snuggles between them, his little fingers grasping at the hem of Kaelyn's shirt, prompting Nate to catch his hand. Underneath her ear, his heartbeat slows to a gentler rhythm. Her hand runs through his hair, and she find the raised bump on the back his head just above his right ear. Her touch gentles the moment she realizes what it is, accompanied by a questioning look.

"Rosa's kid," he says.

It's all the explanation anyone ever needs when it comes to Luis. Kaelyn will be sure to have words with Ms Rosa. Nate ducks his head to kiss away her anger.

Kaelyn says at last, "Shaun is never going to sleep in his own bed again."

Nate groans and stretches as best he can on the gurney, which results in three limbs dangling over the edges. "I'd settle for a bigger bed."

If they hadn't been welcomed into the dormitory with their baby before, they definitely won't be now. "Sooner or later, the infirmary will be needed for its intended use. Maybe we should look into a permanent relocation."

Their home above ground flits across her mind. While it hadn't been the intention of her suggestion, she wonders when—or if—they can ever live there again. If their house is in any livable condition anymore.

Indeed, Brenner evicts them after breakfast so she can check their neighbors one by one. Or rather, she gives them a polite warning that they ignore the same way one rolls deeper into the blankets when an alarm goes off. Kaelyn's halfway back to sleep when there's a crash.

She clips her forehead against Nate's chin when she jumps. Shaun lets out a wail, and as Nate hushes him, Kaelyn looks over to see Brenner standing by her desk. There's an empty tray on the desk and a bland smile on her face. They hurriedly dress and vacate the premises as directed. Kaelyn takes Nate's hand to lead him to the mess.

"What's the rush?" he teases.

"I don't like—lazing around here. I want to help."

Nate's huff exists somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "A tiny human being is entirely dependent on you. That isn't exactly 'lazing around'. But if you want to lend a hand around here, we can find something."

One problem is apparent: Nate had gone to the surface to find food and returned with more mouths to feed. Even if Sanctuary Hills' residents add their supplies to the vault's stock, they still don't yet have enough to release the others from cryo. The second problem will be space. They need more beds, and a work roster to maintain the vault. At least they have a medic in the form of Brenner.

Nate and Shaun are getting along much better now—or, perhaps more accurately, Shaun has learned to accept his father. He probably doesn't even remember Nate from his first month of life, but that won't stop Nate from making new memories with him. So after Shaun is fed, with her two men playing and Codsworth in a cleaning blitz, Kaelyn explores Vault 111. The lights are softer than she remembers, and the temperature is lower. Perhaps that last one is psychological; her feet have been cold from the moment she stepped into the decontamination pod. Cryo pod.

A whisper of footsteps follow her down the dim corridors. Even though she knows they're her own echoing behind her, the back of her neck prickles. It's still hard to consider that the staff who welcomed them into Vault 111, ushered them into the pods, used them as unknowing test subjects—they're gone. Nate hadn't gone into detail, but the word 'mutiny' carries certain connotations.

There's a stain on the floor near the door, and she wonders if she wants to know what it is.

Bypassing the mystery stain, Kaelyn investigates the room. It counts among the larger she's seen in the vault, illuminated by downlights that flicker into existence at the door's motion. They cast cool light around the room, chasing the deeper tones to puddle in the corners. The presence of unused space is almost criminal, hosting only a massive desk that arches around a well-padded office chair.

But then, the elite always play by their own rules. This must be the Overseer's office.

Sinking into the chair, the heavenly padding soothes the various aches in her back and shoulders; its worth the price of coughing up dust that has settled into every crevice of the faux leather. Back rubs can only mitigate so much of the resulting soreness from their less-than-ideal sleeping space. With a long, reedy sigh that starts deep in her chest, she relaxes fully into the chair. This is better than her chair at the firm. That one had been old enough the padding had flattened from extended use.

The desk terminal is locked, but curiosity wins over good manners. Her friend Padma had taught her how to generate a data dump of recently typed words that includes the password. A few minutes later, the terminal welcomes back the Overseer. Telling herself this is just to find any information that can help them rebuild, she pours over his local files.

But the records she pulls up are those regarding the experiment.

She just wants to know why. What they'd been hoping to achieve. If they'd wanted, they could have told the truth about the pods but spun it in an inviting manner: cryogenically preserved, you will be safe from the immediate dangers of the fallout while we reestablish contact with HQ! It'll be like taking a nap, and when you wake up a new world will be waiting for you!

Shaun is mentioned more than once. Not by name—never by name—but as 'the infant subject'. Sickness pools in her gut, a miasma that washes through her body. Logging off, Kaelyn pushes to her feet, heart pounding in her ears, hands trembling. Her baby had been nothing more than a curiosity to them as they openly speculated whether cryogenic stasis is even safe for an infant.

It would be hard to reconcile with the Overseer's smiling welcome, guiding them into their new home, if she didn't already know he lied.

Another door sits in an unobtrusive corner. It springs open at her touch, revealing a luxurious bedroom—relatively speaking, at least. Half the size of the office, it offers ample space for a double bed, dressers, and even a bookshelf. Investigating the door on the other side of the room exposes a private bathroom. For all its spartan furniture, the presence of a private shower cubicle makes up for the hideous color scheme.

The bookshelf holds a number of medical tomes, a few magazines, and a half-dozen self-help books, lined up in that pristine manner that betrays them to be as much decoration as the generic painting of a sailboat hanging on the wall. Only more pretentious. After her years in the firm, visiting many an office with walls of untouched bookshelves, the tells are obvious. Kaelyn runs her hand along their spines. All this assembled knowledge is now more precious than ever, sitting quiet and innocuous as it does, as the most dangerous things always do.

The Overseer's ghost chases her out of the room. Kaelyn is halfway down the corridor when something clatters.

She whirls, arms locking up, adrenaline spiking on her tongue.

It's just a cockroach, scurrying away from an overturned bucket. Here's hoping Codsworth has learned how to eradicate pests without resorting to his flamethrower.

With a sheepish exhale, Kaelyn retreats to the mess hall, but her thoughts circle back to the bookshelves and double bed.

Nate and Ms Rosa are sitting at the table in the mess while Codsworth washes the dishes. Shaun stands in Nate's lap, gripping the collar of his jacket for balance, and bounces on his knees. He's the first to notice her, interrupting Nate with a squeal of delight.

"Here I am," she calls as Nate looks over his shoulder.

"There you are, mum! Mister Nate and I were wondering where you were!"

"Just exploring a bit." Shaun reaches for Kaelyn as she slides into the seat beside Nate. She lightly bops his nose and lets him wrap his pudgy hand around her fingers. "Hello to you too, little one. And you." She leans over to kiss Nate's cheek.

A distant alarm blares.

Brenner rushes past the mess, a blur of motion, her hair streaming behind her. She doesn't even stop, just glances through the doorway and then she's gone, her voice floating behind her. "Nate! I need you here!"

"What's happening?" he calls.

"One of the pods malfunctioned! Come on!"

Even if the command is directed at Nate, Kaelyn follows on his heels.

"I'll look after young Shaun while you help!" Codsworth calls after their backs. "There, there! Your parents will be back in no time, I'm sure!"

The air grows chill, spearing Kaelyn's lungs with every breath. Brenner and Nate take off ahead, tracking through the corridors down to the bowels of the vault. Kaelyn rounds the corner to see them enter Bay C. Leaping straight over the stairs, Brenner skids on the icy floor to halt in front of a pod. Hands press against the glass on the inside, fingers unfurling like the frostbitten petals of a drooping flower, too weak to bang their panic.

Brenner hits the manual override and the pod cracks open. Its occupant flops into Nate's arms like an icicle cleaved from an overhang. He lowers her to the ground and Brenner checks her pulse. When Nate shifts on his knees, her face becomes visible.

Mrs Able.

"What's going on?" Loitering at the top of the stairs are all of Vault 111's remaining residents. Ms Rosa is the one who asked.

"You!" Brenner points at Hawthorne. "Grab the gurney from the infirmary!"

With a quick nod he detaches from the group and bolts down the corridor. Luis peers around his mother to the scene unfolding, his too-large baseball cap half-cocked on his head.

Kaelyn holds out a hand to stop him from slinking past her. "We should stay back and let them work in peace." Even if it doesn't sit right, even if she wants to crouch by Mrs Able and help, or just hold her hand, she'll only get in the way. Mrs Able is limp on the ground, her weak gasps echoing in the chamber like silver fish darting away from predators. Nate and Brenner crouch over her, checking her for injury as best they can without any equipment, murmuring to each other. A wheeling clatter heralds Hawthorne's return with the gurney.

"Out of the way!" Kaelyn urges the gawking observers to back up as Nate lifts Mrs Able onto the gurney. "I'll handle them. You look after her!"

He and Brenner wheel her away as quickly as they entered Bay C. Kaelyn holds out a hand to halt Anna, who moves to follow. "We need to let them work without us hovering over their shoulders."

"But that's Mrs Able," she protests.

"I know. But we'd only get in the way. That goes for you, too," she adds when Luis tries yet again to duck around her outstretched arm.

"But I wanna see what's going on!" Luis whines.

Drawing in a short breath, Kaelyn says, impassive, "You can find out if she's all right when the rest of us do. Rosa?"

After years of Luis's antics, all one needs to implore Ms Rosa to control her son is a word. Snaring his shoulder with one hand, she draws him away with promises of Blast Radius.

Kaelyn herds the group back to the mess hall, gently urging Hawthorne to keep up when he stops to ogle through the windows into Bay A.

"What was it like?" he asks. "Being an ice block?"

The memories press down on her, so heavy they steal her breath. She can taste astringent on her tongue. Still, she answers honestly. "It was just… black. It was like going to sleep with the window open in winter. If that answers your question, we should go."

As he falls in step behind her, he remarks, "You know, if not for the fact it requires trusting that you'll be let out on time, that might be a good way to ride out the apocalypse. Go to sleep and wake up when there's enough food again. Hell, it might be a better trip than any of my stock…"

In the mess, it's a tense wait that is all the more grating for Codsworth's attempts to lighten the mood. "Who's up for a game of charades?"

"Maybe some other time," Kaelyn says.

What could be an hour later—and they do need to invest in working clocks around here—Nate drops heavily into the seat beside her and rests his hand on Shaun's hair. A stray droplet of water rolls from his freshly-washed hand. Exhaustion creeps along his face with the silent persistence of ivy smothering a house.

Preoccupied with massaging the tension from the back of Nate's neck, Kaelyn isn't the one to ask.

"How is she?" Anna asks.

"Sleeping, for the moment. We got her stable, but now we need to find the cause of the malfunction."

Instead of taking a shower and a nap, Nate swills a cup of coffee and heads back to the cryogenic array to do just that, scouring the logs on the local monitoring terminals for clues. No doubt his thoughts bound in a similar direction to hers: maybe cryogenic stasis isn't safe after all. Maybe next time it will kill someone.

By the time Brenner announces Mrs Able is ready for visitors, Kaelyn is all but lining up outside the door. She sits beside Mrs Able's bed, Shaun employing her lap as a personal jungle gym.

If only the antics of her infant son can distract Mrs Able from more pressing concerns. "I could have sworn I saw your husband, dear, but isn't he on duty? It seems strange I haven't seen any of the vault doctors."

Remembering that confusion all too clearly, the frosted glaze on her first memories out of the pod, Kaelyn says, "I'm afraid the pods weren't for decontamination. Vault-Tec lied to us. They froze us in cryogenic stasis."

Mrs Able blinks up at her. "I'm sorry, dear, but I don't understand what you mean."

So Kaelyn lays everything out, from beginning to end, even though shock has descended in earnest, a thick piling of cotton wool that prevents Mrs Able from absorbing the timeline of events.

Only one thing can pierce her fugue: mention of her husband, Roger. "Where is he?" she asks. "We came into the vault together. He should be here. My parents are in New York, and my sister is interstate. She must have been far enough away from that awful bomb, surely."

Ah. Her concern conjure demons more surely than an incantation, releasing them to lurk on the shadowed ceiling. Without even a glimpse of the surface after that awful orange glow, fear is given free reign to toy with Kaelyn's imagination, conjuring images of burned out buildings and broken bodies.

Nate survived for eight months. She has to hold onto that. Nate survived. Her neighbors survived. That means something.

"I hope so." Non-committal, perhaps, but it's the only true statement to be made. "As for your husband, he's still in cryogenic stasis. We're going to release everyone when we can, but we have a lot of work ahead of us to make this place livable."

* * *

With the sudden emergence of another human who requires sustenance, the food talk is pushed to the top of the agenda again. They can't count on cryogenic stasis remaining stable for a long time, so the sooner they have the supplies to release everyone, the better. Gathered around one of the tables in the mess, Vault 111's modest number of residents suddenly feels like too many. The air is now warmed by body heat and tension. Mrs Able sits between Ms Rosa and Jacinta, her slender hands wrapped around a steaming mug.

Nate leans forward in his seat. "So how did you guys survive eight months topside? You must've found food somewhere."

"Besides raiding every pantry? We nurtured a few plants that had survived around Sanctuary Hills," Jacinta explains. "It was better than nothing, but it still..."

Anna covers her wife's hand with their own, linking their fingers together. But Anna's expression is likewise absent, both women staring into two separate spaces.

"You bet it wasn't," Hawthorne grimaces. "We were going through all the houses in the street. Even caught a few animals before they all died in the rain. When people started dropping, it meant less food had to be shared 'round."

Neither Nate or Brenner bat an eyelash at this, but Kaelyn's stomach turns. How can the deaths of their neighbors be worth only a casual remark?

"For now we can scavenge what's left behind," Brenner says, "but it won't last forever."

Shaun burps and Kaelyn mops up the milk spillage. "And you'll have to travel farther and farther away as we deplete local supplies." She watches Nate. He'll be the one to volunteer for any scavenging jobs. She just knows it.

"We could establish a hydroponics lab," Mrs Able says. "I had some seeds I'd been keeping for an emergency. Tomatoes don't match roses, you understand." In the days since her recovery, she has been quiet, taken to long hours of watching her tea cool or visiting her still-frozen husband in Bay C. She hasn't regained her strength, and hasn't taken well to the strict rationing that's in place. But that torpor begins to peel away like worn bark from the trunk of a tree, revealing a new resolve to put her skills to use.

Murmurs of approval circuit the table.

Hawthorne crosses his arms. "And where are we gonna get the supplies for that? Plants don't just grow underground."

If Miller were here—as the engineer who once resurrected Kaelyn's terminal from the dead—she'd know a way to build a contraption that would solve their problems. Wherever she and Sculley are, Kaelyn hopes they've found her family. That they're safe.

Folding her hands on the table, Mrs Able straightens her shoulders and clears her throat. "With correct setup, they can."

"Listen here, folks." Hawthorne's chair squeaks as he leans back, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. "You realize what we're sitting on? Working cryogenic stasis. This is _huge._ _"_

Nate raises an eyebrow, but is tone is mild. "You miss the part were we just had to pull someone out because of mechanical failure?"

"And you've committed yourself to making sure that never happens again, right? You say the solution to find more food, but what if there's another option? If we can't feed everyone, just chuck a few in stasis until there's more. No cannibalism required."

"You volunteering?"

Under the table, Kaelyn squeezes Nate's knee. She says, honestly, "That hadn't occurred to me. If it's deemed safe—" she glances in the direction of Brenner, who has remained silent so far "—then perhaps we can look into it. On the condition that it will only be done with someone's informed consent. We aren't Vault-Tec."

"Remember this is experimental technology," Brenner says. "We don't know what the long-term effects are because this has never been done before. Not to my knowledge, at least."

"The world's never burned in nuclear fire before, either," he shoots back.

It's the verbal equivalent of jabbing a broken bone, finding the center of the throbbing, red-hot hurt and pressing down on it. The table becomes an object of fascination for a half-dozen pairs of eyes, some red, some overbright, all downcast.

Kaelyn breaches the silence, pretending Hawthorne did not just say that. "To sum up, in the short term we'll scour Sanctuary Hills and Concord for anything left, and in the long term tend our own crops. We'll also investigate the possibility of continuing to use the cryo pods, should individuals wish to do so."

There's a cascade of nods around the table, and that seals it.

Over the next weeks, a flurry of activity defines their waking hours. Being their resident 'army do-gooder', as Brenner affectionately nicknames him, Nate takes the lead on any surface excursions. Kaelyn needs a productive outlet for that niggling unease that rises like a high tide in a dark ocean grotto, so they plan Nate's expected route together. If her profession has taught her anything, it's that knowledge is power. If this is the only advantage she has, she has to leverage it for all its worth.

This isn't the shopping she'd had in mind for Nate when he finally returned from the army.

As their only medic, Brenner is likewise vault-bound. The only other volunteer to head to the surface is Hawthorne, and his request to borrow power armor is shot down without a thought from Nate.

Nate and Hawthorne aren't the only two going for each others' throats. Between looking after Shaun and resolving the petty disputes that crop up, Kaelyn isn't sure who she's mothering more. By this point Codsworth has paid himself off twice over, and is working his way through a third as they alternate between babysitting Shaun and working through their assigned tasks.

When Nate ventures out, he is usually gone most of the day, leaving Kaelyn to play with Shaun and try not to wonder if this is the time he won't come home, or what the surface is like now. The second time he returns victorious, his power armor laden with the asked-for supplies. Kaelyn helps the others untangle the cords that bind his spoils to the frame, since he can't exit his power armor until he's free of them. Being so close to a walking tank still makes her edgy, but when Nate pops off his helmet, his head looks so out of proportion with the armored body that she fights a snicker.

One of the wooden crates squawks when Jacinta grabs it, and she almost drops it in shock. Nate, however, grins, and urges her to open it. With the expression of one who expects a bomb to detonate in her face, Jacinta peels back the lid and a chicken's head pops up. While Brenner confirms it to be irradiated and most of the eggs it lays are unfit to eat, they keep the hen in the hopes it might one day recover enough to provide good eggs.

One of the secondary labs is chosen to be converted into a hydroponics lab. With the books Nate rescued for Mrs Able, she sketches a possible setup for the lab. Instead of toiling over numbers and reports on the cryogenics experiment, the lab's occupants nurtures the seedlings that peek out of the trays within a week. Mrs Able presides over what is now her domain, coaxing the seedlings with a firmness better suited to misbehaving school kids. Jacinta and Anna work with her, and even sweet talk Nate into gathering some cuttings from the surface. The hen is given a home in the lab, though it manages to escape on more than one occasion to wander the corridors.

Mrs Able suggests turning the research papers into fertilizer, but they are rescued by Brenner, who swoops in to claim the lab reports in the name of medical science.

When the hydroponics lab is in working order, those who aren't gardeners are assigned to the various jobs needed to keep the vault in working order, including setting up more living areas for their to-be-woken neighbors. Codsworth is the only one who takes to the task with gusto. Nate still leaves every few days, returning with varying amounts of supplies each time. Sometimes he drags bed frames and other furniture to the elevator.

Between Brenner and Kaelyn, they organize a plan to release the other stasis-bound residents when they have a steady supply of food. So as to not flood the clinic, they'll thaw out the residents in small groups, starting with those deemed by Brenner to be higher risk; namely, those with known medical conditions.

Three months from the time they start their vault renewal project, the stockroom is almost full and the plants are growing well in the hydroponics lab. Brenner does the math, and on the condition surface teams continue to forage, they now have the resources to provide for everyone. With a round-table agreement, they get to work.

Kaelyn counts among the volunteers who help Brenner and Nate work. Of the five, one is Mr Able, who has a heart condition. Thankfully, their release goes as smoothly as Kaelyn's, but Brenner still keeps them in the clinic for an observation period.

Freeing all three bays of stasis subjects is a long and arduous process, if only because of Brenner's caution. What took only moments on October 23 stretches now across several days. Kaelyn can't help on the medical side, but she can talk down confused and recalcitrant patients.

"If you just return to your bed, sir, Brenner will be with you when she's finished," she says, trying to usher a man away fro the door without invading his personal space.

"But I need to know what's going on!" he insists. "Just where is the Overseer, anyway? He said we'd be going through orientation after decontamination."

"We'll explain everything once everyone has been given a clean bill of health," Kaelyn says. "You understand it's better to inform everyone at the same time."

He agrees, albeit reluctantly, and sits down on his bed. Kaelyn withholds a sigh and searches for the next imminent crisis.

She needn't look far. The shapely redhead Kaelyn remembers seeing when she first entered Vault 111 stands by her shoulder. She must be from Concord. Kaelyn braces for another argument, but the woman introduces herself as Phyllis Conway. "Excuse me, dear, you look like you're in charge here. Could you point me to the showers? I need a little clean up."

Kaelyn clears her throat. "I don't know if I'd say I'm in charge, but you want to take two lefts and then a right. The showers are right beside the mess hall."

As Mrs Conway wanders away, Brenner arches an eyebrow. She'd watched the whole thing. "That's… a point." A speculative gleam rests in her eyes like a pearl nestled in a velvet box. "We don't have a leader. That's gonna be problem sooner or later."

As they continue to free people, they get a crash course in the various side effects people have upon waking: insomnia, headaches, low appetites, and a few who are bedridden. Brenner chronicles everything for future reference, and the irony of continuing Vault-Tec's research does not escape her.

Four days later, the mess hall is packed to capacity, and Kaelyn makes a mental note to acquire more furniture.

"Everyone please!" she calls for silence. When the last of murmurs fade like gentle waves lapping at the shore, she explains everything that has happened since October 23, from Vault-Tec's experimentation to her husband's subsequent opening of Vault 111.

Confusion lapses to shock as she talks. A few people call out questions about the state of the world, if they can go home since it's been eight months since the bombs dropped, if the USA has recovered yet to smash the Reds. Beside Kaelyn, Nate shuffles in his seat, crossing and uncrossing his arms. He doesn't facepalm, but from from the way his fingers twitch she's suspicious he wants to.

No one else volunteers to burst these people's hopes, so Kaelyn steps up to do the job. The US Government has fallen, they can go home if they so please but surface conditions are dangerous, and it's highly unlikely there's enough left of the armed forces to marshal a retaliation.

That, of course, does not garner a good reaction.

"So we're stuck here?" someone calls.

"If you go up there, you'll die!"

"I still can't believe it… nuclear war…"

There's nothing to do but let them air their despair.

After a few minutes, Brenner rises to her feet to catch the room's attention. "I have a motion to put before everyone." Her voice is formal, her gaze direct yet cool, as she glances from face to face. "We need some kind of governance. Someone who can step into disputes as a third party and resolve them, if nothing else. To that end, I suggest we name the person who has already worked to keep the peace: Kaelyn Prescott."

Her thoughts momentarily stop at Shock Station and the train breaks down.

Her, lead the vault?

This is more than winning her client's freedom, but guarding these people's very lives.

Under the eyes that suddenly swing in her direction, Kaelyn straightens under the scrutiny, schools her expression, crosses her ankles under the table. From Nate's expression, Brenner hadn't consulted with him beforehand, either.

Brenner calls, "All in favor?"

Hawthorne's hands remain by his sides, fixed to his ribs by the pins of resentment. A few of the strangers from Concord also keep their hands lowered, but that's to be expected. Mr Russell's half-raised arm is begrudging at best, and Mr Able only raises his at a prod from his wife. Conversely, Mrs Conway raises her hand so enthusiastically that she almost takes off her husband's ear. Nate, of course, casts his vote in her favor, and Brenner abstains as the party who raised the motion.

Even without a head count, it's an obvious majority. Years in the courtroom have imparted a tight control over not only her expression but also her posture, but shock cracks the walls of her resolve with a fine yet persistent chisel.

Under the table, Nate takes her hand. Shaun peers out from his lap, his eyes casting about the room until he finds his mother and he lets out a squeal. "See?" Nate teases. "Shaun, for one, welcomes his new leader."

"So what do we call ya?" Hawthorne leans against the wall, crossing his arms over his chest. "Overseer?"

"That does sound rather domineering," Kaelyn admits. "Title to be announced."

Ducking her head to hide her smirk, Brenner calls, "Speech?"

"Speech!"

Thank goodness for all those improvised debate classes in law school. Kaelyn clears her throat and glances from face to face, meeting each one. "In all honesty, this is not what I expected when I walked into this room tonight. But then, this isn't what any of us expected when we signed up for Vault 111, or when we woke up on October 23rd. But this is where we are now, and where we go from here will be charted by us. It won't be easy, but what we have here is more of a chance than many others had."

In the corner of her eye, Nate bows his head.

"This isn't a dictatorship, nor is it an army. Every single voice matters. Regarding issues that involve the entirety of the vault, it will be voted on and I'll abide by the will of the majority."

After the furor has died down, Kaelyn mills to talk to the people who approach her, bequeathing each one with a smile. The Fishers congratulate her, as do Mrs Able and Ms Rosa. Others, like the unfamiliar folks from Concord, want to be introduced and gauge their new leader. After an appropriate amount of socializing, she slips out from the cramped stuffiness of the mess to the cool darkness of the corridor.

"Dylan."

Brenner doesn't appear surprised to be waylaid, swiveling to lean against the wall, one leg crossed. "My first thought was to discuss it with you, but then I thought it would be better if they saw your surprise. So they'd know we haven't collaborated to install you in the position."

It makes sense, even if Kaelyn would have preferred a measure of warning. Even a teaspoon's worth of it. "I understand. Now I have to live up to the faith you've all put in me."

"That right there is why you're a good pick. Not to say nobody else here is qualified, but I don't know any of your neighbors and civilians get pissy when a military force assumes control. I'd rather bet on a known, you know?"

"I suppose I already have a decent poker face for dealing with frustrating people," she concedes.

"That's the spirit." Brenner drapes an arm around her shoulders. "You've got this."

Perhaps fortuitously, doubt only sinks its fangs into Kaelyn when she and her family have retreated to inspect the Overseer's quarters. Kaelyn wanders to the center of the room and halts. Every breath graces her with the peculiar aroma of ice, mold and dust.

Now Nate looks up from the bed, where he's toying with Shaun's kicking legs. "Way I see it, you're getting recognition for being the unsung mediator."

"I just— I'm a lawyer, not a politician."

"We don't need more politicians, frankly. Think of it as an admin job. You get all of the, uh, bad parts of being a secretary with none of the perks."

Kaelyn chuckles. "You sure know how to sell a job."

"Hon. You've got this. Didn't you say that when I came back it's my turn to look after Shaun while you go back to work? You just got your wish. And I, for one, appreciate the new digs."

* * *

Kaelyn walks a circuit of the Overseer's office. It's nothing like her cramped office at the firm; there are no bookshelves, no fake potted plants standing sentinel in the corners, no carpets to muffle the click of her heels. As much as the sounds of continuous traffic used to creep through the window to disrupt her, she only now realizes how preferable it is to a dripping quiet. She runs her fingers along the veneer of the Overseer's desk. It's twice the size of her desk in the firm, and yet perhaps the true marvel is that it is clean. Besides his terminal, pens and a Vault Boy bobblehead, the desk is clutter-free. Whether it will stay that way is another matter.

Hers. This is all hers. As is the bedroom behind her. Now all she has to do is earn it.

Kaelyn rests her hands on the jewelry box Nate rescued, sitting on what is now her desk, and bows her head as she thinks of her friends. Susan may have been spared the worst of it in her family's home, but Padma and Andrea are in the city…

She wonders where her _tatta_ and brother are. If they're even still alive. Somehow, her tempestuous relationship with both of them only makes it harder to contemplate that they're probably gone.

 _Forgive me,_ Amma.

Before the grief can overwhelm her, Nate strolls in, balancing Shaun against his shoulder. Their baby cries out in delight when he sees her and grasps at her blouse the moment she's within reach.

"Hello, my little man." Kaelyn kisses the top of his head, then stretches on her toes to kiss Nate's cheek. "Hello, my big man."

His response is to kiss her properly. Kaelyn certainly can't complain.

Nate turns in a slow circle, whistling. "Your office is nicer than mine." As Vault 111's one-man security team, his own office had been a cramped little space near the cryogenic arrays. Before they'd agreed to move his desk into the Overseer's office, freeing up the old security office for more beds.

"Jealous?" she teases.

His eyes soften. "Proud, actually."


	6. Epilogue

Vault 111 bristles with life. The lights may be dim, but the sounds of chatter reverberate through the walls, warmer and softer than the yellow paint on the walls. The mess hall is occupied at every hour, and Codsworth's circuits buzz with joy at the prospect of having more people to serve. Even if food is on a tight ration, there aren't any restrictions on water, so the showers see a great deal of use.

Funny how Nate used to find the quiet eerie. Now he rather misses it.

Never one to waste a moment, Hawthorne seeks Kaelyn out the next morning. "So, to our glorious new Overseer, I've gotta ask: is the plan to refreeze volunteers still a go?"

She arches an eyebrow, tracing the rim of her coffee mug with a finger. "You still want to try out one of the cryo pods?"

"Takin' a gamble," he says, but his eyes gleam. "Just how I like it."

Hawthorne isn't the only one who opts to go into cryogenic stasis. There's also a couple from Concord who are unimpressed with the prospect of vault living. A middle-aged man who's anxious about what will be on the menu if they run out of food, and another man with chronic back pain who doesn't want to burn through the vault's medications. And finally, a young woman who's excited by the prospect of the world she'll discover upon waking.

Even if Kaelyn holds reservations on allowing people back into stasis—Mrs Able's scare is still fresh in her mind—Nate is privately grateful Hawthorne has volunteered. He's a troublemaker, and this gets him out of the way. Temporarily, at least.

Kaelyn and Brenner sit down with each of them in turn to determine how long they want to be frozen for, or, alternatively, under what circumstances they'd like to be released. If Kaelyn's half involves creating contracts, Brenner's job is to describe the risks involved, which more or less encompasses 'anything and everything'. Brenner uses somewhat more impressive terminology.

After a medical exam, Brenner clears the volunteers for cryogenic stasis. As an aside to Nate, she mutters, "Never thought we'd be putting people back in, but here goes."

As Vault 111's Overseer, Kaelyn is present when the volunteers are frozen. She asks them one by one if they're certain, and then steps back to let Brenner and Nate work. Now dressed in a spare vault suit, Hawthorne twists this way and that to show off his figure.

"This doesn't leave much to the imagination," he smirks. "Bet you're loving the show."

Nate knows for a fact that Brenner ain't impressed. Not at Hawthorne's body, and not at his assumption that women are attracted to men.

As a married woman, Kaelyn doesn't dignify with a response.

Hawthorne gives her a sloppy salute and hops in his pod. Bay A is the largest of the three, but for the sake of logical organization, they use it for the volunteers. With luck, that malfunction might be confined to Bay C's array. When the last man is safely frozen, Kaelyn disappears to fulfill her Overseer-ly duties while Nate spends some quality time with his son.

After putting Shaun to bed, Nate emerges from their quarters to drag Kaelyn away from her desk.

"Day one and you're already working overtime," he teases. "Maybe having the office right next to our quarters is a bad idea."

It isn't home. Not yet, at least. But even if it never is, even if his heart lies in a modern little house in a quiet cul-de-sac, at least it isn't so far away he can't hear the beat.

Kaelyn's gaze grows hooded. "Do you think we'll ever be able to expand to the surface? If our neighbors—some of them, at least—" she falters, carries on with more resolve, "made it out there, can we restore Sanctuary Hills?"

"One day, maybe. Dylan and I can monitor surface radiation levels. When it's safe, we can expand."

"It… won't be what it used to be."

"No," he agrees. "But we're all alive, so I'd call that a win."

Her fingers curl into the collar of his shirt, not quite a fist—something more beseeching. "Shaun needs his father."

He drops a kiss to the top of her head. "And his wonderful mother."

* * *

Arranging the Overseer's bedroom to their satisfaction is apparently as tiring for Shaun to watch as it is for Kaelyn and Nate to do. The kid is all tuckered out, napping in the center of the bed. Beside Nate, Kaelyn wipes her hands on the front of her vault suit, leaving two gray tracks across the blue. Pushing several wayward strands of hair out of his eyes, Nate surveys their progress. Room: dusted. Overseer's belongings: cleaned out. Furniture: arranged according to the missus' directions. Their belongings: ready to find their new homes.

"Not too shabby," Nate says.

Shaun's crib sits in the corner of the room, on top of the nursery rug Nate brought back. Better not let Shaun get cold or uncomfortable on the bare floor. His toys sit in a pilfered Vault-Tec crate beside the dresser—and that piece of furniture had been even less fun to haul into the vault than the crib. As for their bed, the Overseer has not only a private room but a double bed. Just looking at it makes Nate's muscles sigh in relief after sharing that cramped gurney.

It'll be difficult, he knows, to be cooped in a fancy underground bunker with the same few dozen people, probably for the rest of his life. Always wondering about the rest of the surface, and the people he'd left there. His parents, his brothers, Fox Company.

Nate leans over the bed to gently wiggle one of Shaun's toes. The baby stirs, his leg kicking at the contact, and Kaelyn giggles, "Don't wake him!"

Nate reels her in for a kiss that's dusty and sweaty and entirely too much fun—Kaelyn smirks, the corners of her eyes crinkling, and squirms out of his grip.

"You need a shower. Badly." She holds up a hand when he shifts, contemplating whether to make another move anyway, and cocks her head to a closed door on the far side of the room. Now a ghost of a smirk haunts her lips, her eyes half-lidded, as she looks him over from head to toe. "Luckily for you, there's one right there."

With a pointed look back over her shoulder, Kaelyn palms the door controls. It springs open with a hiss, and in the resulting quiet the sound of her zipper is all too loud.

Nate follows with a chuckle, pulling his shirt up over his shoulders and starting on his trousers. "More than happy to oblige, hon."

It almost seems unfair, getting a front row view to Kaelyn peeling out of that tight vault suit: first she pushes it over her shoulders and down her arms, reaching back to unclasp her bra and show off the bare brown expanse of her back. She has more trouble shoving the suit over her thick hips and down her legs, the fabric catching at her calf and toppling her.

Nate lunges to catch her, his arms circling her waist, and he enjoys the feel of her weight against his bare chest as she regains her footing.

Better than the last year of fantasies combined.

"Maybe I should've practiced that one," Kaelyn says, squirming in his arms, and Nate has no choice but to kiss away all traces of dissatisfaction.

"Believe me, that's the best thing I've seen since I shipped out."

"That isn't necessarily a high bar to clear."

She's got a point, but that isn't something either of them would prefer to dwell on. Tucking her hair behind her ear, Nate presses his mouth to the side of her neck, relishing the soft noise she makes. With his assistance to keep her balance, she weasels out of the vault suit with more success on her second attempt. She kicks it to the corner of the room for good measure and slips out of his arms. When she turns around to face him, every thought in his head screeches to a halt.

Aside from her panties, the sweep of her body is unbroken from head to toe. Motherhood accentuated her soft curves, rounding her hips and stomach.

She's so beautiful.

She's also conducting her own inspection of him, and from her expression he suspects she's as awed as he is.

With a sudden smile that has too many teeth, Kaelyn curls one finger around the waistband of his briefs and pushes down. Nate does as he's bid then returns the favor, and she takes his hand to lead him to the shower stall.

Stepping into the hot spray is always a relief at the end of the day, no matter how easy or hard it's been, and even though no shots have been fired today Nate feels strangely tired as hot water pounds the tight muscles in his shoulders and neck. Eschewing proper shower procedure, he wraps his arms around Kaelyn and holds her close as their hair plasters to their skulls.

The only thing that tops a hot shower and his wife is a hot shower _with_ his wife.

Water leaches away the tension from his muscles, leaving a weary lassitude in its place. Maybe it's a trick of memory, but it feels like more than the toil of interior decoration swirls down the drain with sweat and soap. Secure in the knowledge that his family is safe, he's safe, and he can finally let his guard down. It's exhausting in its own right to drop a burden he's carried for a year, since he was last called away from Sanctuary Hills.

With the slow drag of Kaelyn's hand up and down his spine, his blood starts to migrate south of the border. And she is very aware of that fact, if her low smirk is any indication, and pauses. She runs her hands over his skin, searching for changes in an old homecoming ritual. It doesn't register what she staring at until she reaches out to press her fingers to the spot just south of the months-old scar across his ribs. Nate twitches at the contact; the Christmas stabbing isn't his fondest memory. He's about to deflect, make some joke or reassurance, but the sharp slash of her eyes dries the words in his mouth. The pucker between her brows isn't fueled by the ugliness of his scars, but by the hurt they represent.

"It's all right," he says, even though it never is.

In lieu of a response, Kaelyn ducks her head to press a warm kiss to his newest scar. Her lips are ticklish over his sensitive skin, and he fights a shiver.

Kaelyn checks him over inch by inch with eyes and hands, tracing every one of his new scars. There's his final souvenir from Alaska, where a bullet grazed his inner arm. The Reds are crap at giving presents. The old gash on his forearm; she even discovers the tiny burn on his finger.

When Nate can't take any more of Kaelyn's maddening touches, he curls a hand under her chin and pulls her up for a kiss. Her mouth is sweet and hot and eager, her tongue sweeping against his. He's about to press her against the shower wall when a loud cry pierces the air. She stiffens, peering past his shoulder to the door. He hangs his head so his forehead brushes her shoulder.

Dammit.

Kaelyn sighs. "Play time's over, I'm afraid."

With an apologetic pat, she untangles herself from him and gives herself a final quick scrub. Shaun's wails get if not louder, then more insistent by the second.

"Gimme one sec, hon. I'll be right there." Gently pushing her out of the shower, Nate runs the water cold.

* * *

Every day is take your child to work day. It's odd to go from writing reports at his desk to checking on Shaun in his play space, then back to work. What's odder is looking across the room to see Kaelyn working at her desk, when she isn't out mediating disputes directly. Their respective occupations have always been rigidly separate; she a civilian lawyer and he a soldier. He never expected them to blend like this. Not complaining, mind.

Both their jobs require active participation in the daily running of the vault, and they soon discover that carrying a baby with them can help relieve the tension from a brewing situation.

Nate is reaching for his coffee when an alert pops up on his terminal, freezing out the files he's been reviewing.

 _WARNING: Unauthorized activation of Vault 111_ _'s door controls. Proceed with caution!_

Oh, he'll be proceeding all right.

"Nate? You saw it too?" Across the room, Kaelyn still sits at her desk, hands still poised to type. Makes sense the Overseer would be alerted to the vault's opening as well as the head of security.

"Yeah, I saw it." He fumbles for a gun that isn't on his belt, then digs through his desk to find two sidearms. He presses the smaller of the two into her hands. "Be careful with this."

Kaelyn's expression shifts as she accepts the weapon. It doesn't fit in her slender hands, which aren't quite sure how to take the weight. But she checks the safety and the magazine, and catches Nate's nod of approval. So she remembers the times they spent at the shooting range.

He still prays she won't have to use it.

Calling out to Codsworth that he is to protect Shaun, he jogs down the corridors, praying that today isn't the day out of all days where he gets mixed up in the corridors. The warning lights flash orange as the door cycles open with a massive groan, complaining it isn't supposed to be opened with such regularity. Nate watches, leaning forward in his place, worry and hope waging war on his face. Kaelyn hangs back in the corridor as he directs.

Damn, but he wishes for his squad right now. His full squad.

Up the stairs marches none other than Miller, with her family in tow. Clanking up the stairs behind them is the suit of power armor, presumably operated by Sculley. But with their face covered, there's no way to be sure. He had been sick when he'd left.

Kenzie's hair is pulled back in a ponytail, their hair puffing out in a springy starburst behind them. Each parent carries one twin on their hip; the little girls peer around the cavern with eyes so wide the whites are visible from this distance. Then Marie wiggles in her mother's grasp to be set down, her twin following suit, and they race down the catwalk, giggling at the clanks that echo off the high ceiling.

Nate drops to his knees, a grin lighting his face. "Hey, girls! You remember me?"

Isabel looks up at him with the solemn gaze of a four-year-old. "You're the man from Mama's photo," she decides at last.

"That's right. I'm Nate, at your service." Nate ruffles Marie's fluffy black hair as he stands to greet her parents. "Took you long enough, Miller. And Kenzie—glad to see you in one piece!"

"It was hit and miss at times, but all pieces are accounted for," they say as they take his hand. Their smile slides away as they take in the exit zone with its yellow rails and blue lights. "This place really has running water?"

"I take your running water and raise you hot showers."

Relief melts the last of Kenzie's cool and a grin spreads across their face. "Hallelujah."

Kaelyn steps forward to greet the family, earning a shoulder clap from Miller and a quick hug from Kenzie. "I'm glad you found your family, Gina. And it's been too long, Kenzie."

Slinging an arm around Kenzie's waist, Miller pulls them close to her side. "Well, Kenzie here did the bulk of the work keeping the girls safe."

"Your power armor helped," they murmur back.

Nate gives the armor a hearty smack on the elbow while Kaelyn hangs back. "That you in there, Sculley?"

Miller and Kenzie share a look. A spark of tension ignites around the room, contracting the air. The power armor's external speakers click. "You can't get rid of me that easy, Sarge."

Unmitigated relief washes over Nate, as swift and sure as a surging wave crashing on shore.

"What's going— Gina!" Brenner screeches to a halt by the group to share a one-armed hug with Miller, then Kenzie. "Anyone injured? No? Sculley ever going to step out of the armor? Also no?"

Five seconds stretch into ten. Finally, with all the reluctance of an elephant leaving a cool water hole, the seals on the power armor release to spit out Sculley.

His skin is like roasted leather, withered on his bones, and his eyes are black from hemorrhaging. With everything else going on with his appearance, the fact all his hair has fallen out—including his eyebrows—seems like a minor detail, but that's what sticks out to Nate.

Realizing that he's gaping, Nate's mouth shuts with an audible click. "That you, Sculley?"

Beside him, Kaelyn clutches her hands to her chest.

"'Bout as ugly as ever, right?" His voice is low, raspy from scorched vocal cords. He folds his arms across his chest, but the motion only draws attention to the peeling skin on his hands. Any hair he once had on his arms has either fallen out or burned away.

"He's not the only one we've seen," Miller explains. "Whatever the radiation did to them, they're still kicking."

Brenner cocks her head on the side. "You're a stubborn ass, you know that, Sculley?"

He grins, and the expression is too unsettling when he doesn't have any lips. "It _is_ my best feature."

Against all odds Sculley is still alive, and Miller not only found her family but brought all of them back in one piece. If anything, this gives Nate hope.

"C'mon." He jerks his thumb over his shoulder at the vault. "Want to see what we've done with the place? All that's missing is a swimming pool and a TV."

As Nate shows Miller and her family into the vault proper, he can't stop smiling. This isn't the future any of them planned on, but this is what they got. Time to make the most of it.

* * *

 **A/N:** Big thank you to everyone who read/favourited/followed and huge thank you to everyone who reviewed!


End file.
